:>rma 
al 


SUNSHINE 


AND 


AWKWARDNESS 


STRICKLAND  GILLILAN 


SUNSHINE 
AND  AWKWARDNESS 


OF  CALIF.  LIBRARY,  LOS  AW,* 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


INCLUDING  FINNIGIN 

INCLUDING  YOU  AND  ME 

BACH.  $1.00 


SUNSHINE 
AND  AWKWARDNESS 


BY 
STRICKLAND  GILLILAN 

Author  of 'Including  Finnigin,"  etc. 


CHICAGO 

FORBES  AND  COMPANY 
1918 


COPYRIGHT,     1918,    BY 
FORBES  AND  COMPANY 


PREFACE 

I  have  been  giving  a  lecture  entitled  "Sun- 
shine and  Awkwardness"  for  a  whole  lot  of 
years.  It  started  by  my  being  called  on  to 
recite  "Finnigin  to  Flannigan,"  when  I  first 
wrote  that  thing,  in  the  early  spring  of  1897. 
I  felt  so  keenly  my  extreme  gawkiness  that  I 
apologized  for  getting  up.  People  laughed  at 
my  apology;  and  I,  who  had  never  heard  of  a 
monologue  in  my  whole  life,  found  that  I  was 
doing  one !  I  let  it  lengthen. 

Then  my  sensitive  soul  got  busy  and  balked. 
I  wanted  to  make  people  laugh  with  me,  and  I 
hated  to  be  laughed  at.  I  wanted  to  be  taken 
seriously  whenever  I  qualifiedly  pleased.  I 
wondered  what  to  do.  About  that  time  I  saw 
and  heard  Bob  Burdette.  I  said  to  myself, 
"I  can  do  what  I  want  to.  I  can  be  as  funny 
as  the  mischief  and  yet  get  myself  taken  seri- 

5 


2129881 


PREFACE 

ously  when  I  want  to,  and  thus  save  my  own 
self-respect  and  not  feel  like  an  idiot  or  a  clown. 
I  have  seen  a  man  do  it,  and  I  can  do  it  too.  I 
shall  reserve,  as  Bob  did,  the  right  to  be  serious 
at  any  unexpected  moment." 

So  I  tried.  It  worked  pretty  well,  thank 
you.  I  found  my  stuff  growing  in  length,  and 
I  built  in  little  blending  places  to  make  it  all 
sound  as  if  it  followed  naturally.  I  let  the 
audience  get  to  thinking  it  was  going  to  laugh 
all  night  and  then  I  changed  its  tune.  It  was 
hard  to  do  at  first.  But  I  found  that  if  I  my- 
self were  really  in  earnest  the  crowd  would  find 
it  out  and  join  me.  I  also  found  that  a  crowd 
that  has  been  cleanly  tickled  is  in  the  finest  pos- 
sible state  of  mind  to  be  clearly  taught.  And 
I  have  had  a  perfectly  ripping  time  ever  since, 
with  my  folks- in-front.  Except— 

I  said  an  earful  then,  son !  Except  was  my 
middle  name  for  several  years.  I  reached  a 
point  that  all  young  lecturers  reach,  where  I 
thought  I  was  the  supreme  test  of  a  com- 

6 


PREFACE 

munity's  intelligence.  If  I  shot  my  stuff  at 
them  and  they  didn't  impersonate  pretzels  with 
the  spasms  of  laughter  I  caused,  they  were 
fools.  I  was  a  sort  of  litmus  paper  thrust  into 
their  midst  to  test  their  mental  reaction.  If  I 
turned  blue,  they  were  alkali,  and  if  I  turned 
pink  they  were  acid.  This  reaction  stuff  may 
be  exactly  wrong,  but  you  get  the  idea  anyway. 

So  long  as  I  had  that  idea  I  alternated  be- 
tween the  happy  heights  and  the  dismal  depths. 
I  hated  audiences  and  towns  and  committee- 
men  and  bureaus  and  oh,  I  don't  know  what 
all.  I  was  a  martyr  loose  in  an  unfeeling 
world,  where  only  the  smartest  audiences  took 
kindly  to  me. 

Then  I  got  wise  by  realizing  I  was  foolish. 
I  found  that  I  had  to  make  good  separately 
and  anew  in  every  town  I  went  into.  I  found 
that  if  I  was  nice  and  friendly  and  liked  people 
and  wanted  just  my  hardest  to  give  them  a 
happy  evening  that  wouldn't  leave  a  bad  taste 
in  their  mouths,  I  had  a  fair  chance  of  getting 

7 


PREFACE 

myself  liked  both  on  and  off  the  platform  not 
just  off  and  on  as  I  had  been  doing.  Then  I 
began  being  humble  and  fearfully  sincere  in 
my  anxiety  to  mean  something  bright  and  help- 
ful to  a  neighborhood.  And  it  was  easier  to 
succeed.  I  quit  being  sore  at  the  boys  on  the 
front  seat,  because  the  boys  began  to  forget 
their  peanuts  and  listen  to  me.  I  had  learned 
"English  as  she  is  spoke,"  and  had  not  always 
succeeded  with  it.  I  learned  the  human  lan- 
guage as  she  is  felt,  and  began  to  be  under- 
stood. 

In  this  book  are  the  things  I  said  when  I 
began  giving  a  whole  evening,  after  I  had 
been  in  the  business  a  few  years.  This  is  a  full 
lecture-course  evening.  When  I  speak  at  a 
Chautauqua  after  a  prelude,  I  take  an  axe  to 
this  and  give  about  half  of  it.  When  I  come 
back  the  next  year  I  give  the  other  half.  So 
if  you  hear  me  in  the  summer  you'll  hear,  for 
the  first  two  times  in  your  town,  just  about  the 
sum  total  of  this  book's  contents,  with  many 

8 


PREFACE 

embellishments  and  bringings-up-to-date.  If 
I  come  a  third  and  a  fourth  time  you'll  hear 
variations  of  a  wholly  new  lecture,  "A  Sample 
Case  of  Humor,"  which  is  another  story  and 
another  book-to-be. 

I  never  heard  of  any  one  asking  Mark 
Twain  or  James  Whitcomb  Riley  who  wrote 
the  stuff  they  gave.  But  they  ask  me.  I 
blush  and  say,  "I  done  it  myself."  For  like 
them,  only  infinitely  less  in  my  own  estimation 
and  that  of  two  or  three  other  ignorant  folks, 
I  write  the  things  I  give. 

Now  a  gentle  word  about  stories,  son :  Did 
you  ever  read  what  Kipling  said  about  himself? 
This  is  it: 

"When  'Omer  smote  his  bloomin'  lyre 
He'd  'card  men  talk,  on  land  and  sea ; 
And  what  he  thought  he  might  require, 
He  went  and  took,  the  same  as  me." 

Me  too,  Rudyard.  Whenever  I  saw  or 
heard  the  nucleus  of  a  good,  applicable  yarn, 

9 


PREFACE 

I  took  the  little  germ  and  put  it  in  the  window 
box  or  flower-pot  of  my  own  imagination,  took 
care  of  it  until  it  blossomed,  and  placed  it  on 
exhibition.  I  have  my  own  version  of  stories 
— therein  lies  the  right  I  have  to  call  them 
"my"  stories.  I  don't  believe  anybody  ever 
originated  any  story.  But  though  the  carpen- 
ter doesn't  originate  the  lumber  with  which  he 
makes  a  house,  nobody  hesitates  to  say  that 
the  carpenter  is  the  maker  of  that  house. 

Now,  here's  the  book.  The  lecture  isn't  al- 
ways just  like  this,  and  it  will  change — oh,  how 
it  will  change!  But  it  follows  the  same  gen- 
eral direction  that  my  first  attempt  at  lecturing 
followed — it  is  a  sort  of  honest  human  docu- 
ment telling  in  the  first  person  the  story  of 
most  normal  human  lives.  I  love  the  lecture 
myself  because  a  lot  of  good  people  have  shown 
a  strong  liking  for  it,  and  their  judgment  is 
infinitely  better  than  mine. 

Yours  garrulously, 

STKICKLAND  GILLILAN. 
10 


SUNSHINE 

AND 

AWKWARDNESS 


Ladies  and  Gentlemen  and  Any  Others  Who 
May  be  Here : — 

There  are  several  of  you  present  on  this  oc- 
casion, I  notice,  who  are  making  absolutely 
your  first  public  appearance — before  me.  Yet 
I  hope  that  fact  may  not  embarrass  you  any 
more  than  you  can't  help ;  and  that  by  the  time 
we  have  been  together  here  a  little  while,  by  the 
time  you  and  I  have  recovered  to  some  extent 
from  the  shock,  and  by  the  time  I  have  made 
a  number  of  startling  and,  perhaps,  entirely 
un-called-for  confessions,  we  may  feel  as  if  we 
had  known  each  other  as  long  as  is  necessary. 

11 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

How  THINGS  ARE  NAMED 

This  entertainment  of  which  I  am  about  to 
begin  to  relieve  my  system — liable  to  begin 
almost  any  time,  now ! — is  not  a  lecture.  It  is 
called  a  lecture  because — well,  because  it  isn't 
one.  So  many  things  in  this  world  are  named 
that  same  way — according  to  some  law  of  op- 
posites  or  contraries  that  we  can't  understand 
or  explain.  For  instance,  when  a  baby  wakes 
and  cries  in  the  night,  we  give  it  a  glass  of 
water  and  tell  it  to  dry  up;  when  we  are  en- 
gaged in  the  familiar  process  of  robbing  a 
chicken  of  all  its  clothing,  we  say  we  are  dress- 
ing the  chicken;  and  when  two  railroad  loco- 
motives come  together  we  say  it  is  a  collision, 
while  when  two  babies  come  together  we  say 
it's  twins. 

THE  TITLE  EXPLAINED  AWAY 
This  is  simply  a  bunch  of  rambling,  homely, 
every-day  talks,  by  a  rambling,  homely,  every- 

12 


A  DISAPPOINTMENT 

day  man.  At  least  I  think  I  am  homely  every 
day.  I  can't  remember  having  had  a  day  off. 
If  this  affair  could,  by  the  furthest  stretch  of 
the  most  flexible  imagination,  be  called  a  lec- 
ture of  any  kind,  it  might  just  as  well  as  not  be 
called  by  a  title  an  enemy  of  mine  gave  it,  once, 
after  he  had  watched  it  through  to  the  bitter 
end.  He  said  it  ought  to  be  called  an  illus- 
trated lecture  on  "Sunshine  and  Awkward- 
ness," with  the  audience  illustrating  the  sun- 
shine while  I  did  all  the  heavy  work  myself. 

A  DISAPPOINTMENT 

I  have  often  suspected  that  the  reason  I  took 
up  with  the  sunshine  end  of  this  thing  was  that 
when  I  was  a  little  boy  growing  up  on  a  farm 
—now,  what  do  you  know  about  that !  There's 
the  same  disappointment  I  meet  every  place  I 
face  an  audience.  I  have  been  before  thou- 
sands and  thousands  of  audiences,  from  the 
ragged  edges  of  Maine  to  the  flea-bitten  sands 
of  the  Pacific,  and  have  broken  to  nearly  every 

13 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

audience,  as  sensationally  as  I  could,  the  news 
that  I  had  grown  up  on  a  farm,  and  I  have 
never  yet  seen  anybody  look  surprised  at  it! 

A  SUNSHINE  ABSORBENT 

But,  as  I  was  about  to  say  when  I  inter- 
rupted me,  while  I  was  growing  up  on  a  farm  I 
absorbed  all  the  sunshine  I  could.  I  used  up 
all  the  sunshine  they  had  in  that  vicinity  that 
wasn't  needed  for  the  other  vegetation.  I  did 
this  by  inserting  as  few  obstacles  as  possible  be- 
tween my  somewhat  skimpy  anatomy  and  the 
sun.  To  be  perfectly  clear  in  my  statement, 
so  that  he  who  reads  may  run  if  it  will  be  any 
relief  to  him,  I  wore  just  as  few  clothes  as  the 
laws  of  my  native  state  of  Ohio  would  permit 
any  human  to  wear  and  remain  in  sight.  My 
costume,  from  early  in  May  to  the  back  end 
of  October,  consisted  entirely  of  a  pair  of 
threadbare  blue  overalls,  usually  hung  at  half 
mast,  with  a  hickory  shirt,  one  bed-ticking  gal- 
lus  and  a  rag  wrapped  around  one  toe. 

14 


A  GALLUS  SOLO 

A  GALLUS  SOLO 

Now  there  were  two  reasons  why  I  wore  just 
one  gallus,  in  my  exuberant  youth:  If  I  had 
worn  two  galluses  in  that  community,  at  the 
same  time,  I  should  have  been  called  a  dude. 
And  the  other  was  that  my  parents  were  in 
very  limited  circumstances  financially,  and 
they  found  it  a  great  deal  easier  to  keep  me  in 
suspense  than  in  suspenders.  So  they  did. 

A  FRECKLE  TRUST 

I  started  out  every  spring  with  about  nine 
hundred  and  twenty-four  freckles — now  that 
isn't  official.  The  official  returns  aren't  in  yet ! 
—and  I  wound  up  in  the  fall  with  just  one 
freckle.  That  is  official.  The  freckles  with 
which  I  opened  the  season  looked  like  rust,  and 
the  continuous  one  with  which  I  finished  in  the 
fall  looked  like  a  trust — it  had  absorbed  all  the 
raw  material  obtainable  and  was  negotiating 
for  more. 

15 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

AN  INCURABLE  CASE 

It  was  while  I  was  growing  up  amid  these 
luxurious  and  pampered  circumstances  that  my 
parents  discovered,  with  some  degree  of  alarm, 
that  I  had  in  me  the  microbes  of  newspaper, 
magazine  and  platform  humor,  and  poetry. 
It  worried  them  almost  to  death ;  for,  although 
you  who  have  been  watching  me  closely  have 
seen  nothing  to  make  you  even  suspect  it,  my 
folks  were  nice  folks.  And  they  didn't  want 
any  of  the  boys  to  go  wrong  if  they  could  pre- 
vent it.  So  they  applied  every  form  of  home 
treatment  they  knew — including  the  laying  on 
of  hands! — to  try  to  get  this  out  of  me,  but  the 
treatments  were  all  total  failures,  and  the  case 
at  length  became  chronic  and  incurable. 

A  MOTHER'S  FORBEARANCE 
Among  the  first  outbreaks  of  what  proved 
afterward  to  be  the  worst  possible  case  of  the 
horriblest  form  of  so-called  humor  that  ought 

16 


SOME  SINCERE  BUTTONS 

to  be  punished  with  death  by  slow  torture  was 
once  when  my  mother  had  just  got  through 
baking  and  churning.  She  asked  me  if  I 
wouldn't  take  grandma's  bread  and  butter 
over.  I  told  her  I'd  take  her  bread,  but  I 
wouldn't  but  'er  over.  And  in  spite  of  that, 
my  life  was  spared ! 

SOME  SINCERE  BUTTONS 

And  then  there  was  my  little  brother  Ernest. 
Why,  to  live  in  the  same  farm-house  and  grow 
up  on  the  same  farm,  in  the  same  township, 
quarter-section  and  range,  with  him,  was  a  lib- 
eral education  in  humor.  Ernest  was  the  most 
peculiar  child  I  have  ever  experienced.  He 
had  all  of  those  things  called  "marked  peculiar- 
ities," and  then  he  had  a  whole  lot  of  other  pe- 
culiarities that  we  didn't  have  time  to  mark. 
He  was  all  peculiarities,  Ernest  was. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  things  about  my 
little  brother  Ernest  was  his  appetite.  He 
never  got  hungry  at  all.  He  just  stayed  hun- 

17 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

gry.  And  you  had  to  be  mighty  careful  what 
you  left  lying  around  if  you  ever  wanted  to  see 
it  any  more.  Well,  one  time  mother  had  been 
to  town  and  bought  a  whole  lot  of  things  for  the 
farm-house  and  had  left  her  packages  lying  all 
about  the  sitting-room  while  she  hurried  out  to 
cook  dinner,  so  we  could  go  out  and  do  our 
seventh  or  eighth  half-day's  work  that  day 
while  she  staid  in  the  house  and  did  her  tenth  or 
eleventh.  Ernest  was  snooping  around  among 
the  things  she  had  brought  home.  He  found  a 
card  of  buttons.  Now,  as  nearly  as  I  can  recol- 
lect, that  card  was  about  six  inches  square,  blue 
on  one  side  and  white  on  the  other,  as  so  many 
button  cards  are  built.  On  the  blue  side  were 
sewed  three  dozen  of  those  old-fashioned  white 
glass  shirt  buttons — about  as  big  as  a  dime  or 
fifteen  cents — in  beautiful  straight  rows — 
straight  as  a  gun-barrel. 

Ernest  looked  at  those  beautiful  straight 
rows  laid  out  symmetrically  across  that  beauti- 
ful dark  blue  buttonscape  until,  it  being  so 

18 


SOME  SINCERE  BUTTONS 

nearly  meal-time,  he  lost  control,  absolutely,  of 
that  destructive  appetite  he  always  had  with 
him.  He  started  in  to  swallow  those  buttons 
one  at  a  time  just  as  fast  as  he  could  loosen 
them  from  the  card.  Toward  the  last,  by  hur- 
rying some  and  taking  both  hands  and  some 
enthusiasm  to  it,  he  got  such  a  motion  on  him 
that  you  could  hear  those  buttons  click  against 
each  other  on  the  way  down. 

Mother  caught  him  just  as  he  had  swal- 
lowed the  last  button  and  was  wondering 
what  he  had  better  do  with  the  card.  Mother 
was  awfully  peeved,  for  she  had  been  intending 
to  use  those  buttons  herself,  that  afternoon. 
Maybe  not  the  same  way.  She  punished 
Ernest  just  as  hard  as  she  could.  She  never 
punished  any  of  us  on  an  empty  stomach. 
She  always  turned  us  over.  She  punished 
Ernest  as  hard  as  she  could  and  Ernest  cried 
as  hard  as  he  could,  and  said  he  was  only  in 
fun;  but  mother  knew  only  too  well  that  the 
buttons  were  in  Ernest. 

19 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

MARKETING  MASTERPIECES 

It  was  only  a  little  while  after  I  broke  out 
with  the  poetry  disease  that  I  began  worrying 
and  fretting  over  the  fact  that  the  world  was 
missing  all  these  beautiful  gems  I  was  creat- 
ing. I  felt  so  sorry  for  the  world  that  I  could 
hardly  keep  back  the  tears.  Once  when  my 
pity  for  the  suffering  universe  had  got  entirely 
beyond  my  control,  I  gathered  up  an  arm-load 
of  the  stuff  I  had  been  doing  and  carried  it  to 
the  nearest  town  and  showed  it — I  mean  I 
started  to  show  it — to  a  newspaper  man.  He 
looked  at  the  verses  as  long  as  he  cared  to  and 
at  me  as  long  as  he  could  stand  it,  and  then 
said: 

"Boy,  what  makes  you  do  this  sort  of  thing? 
Aren't  you  feeling  well?" 

I  told  him  I  thought  I  was  getting  big 
enough  now  to  be  doing  something  to  keep  the 
wolf  from  the  door. 

"You've  done  it  already,"  he  said.  "Just 
20 


THAT  INSULTING  MIRROR 

take  this  stuff  home  and  hang  it  on  the  door  in 
plain  sight  and  no  wolves  or  anything  else  will 
bother  you." 

He  said  that  and  some  other  things  that 
made  me  believe,  almost  as  if  he  had  told  me, 
that  he  didn't  want  those  verses,  and  I  took 
them  away  from  him. 

THAT  INSULTING  MIRROR 

But  I  had  another  errand  in  town — it  was 
too  far  from  our  house  to  town  to  waste  a  whole 
trip  on  a  piffling  errand  like  that.  This  other 
job  I  had  that  day  was  nothing  more  nor  less 
important,  momentous,  portentous  and  epoch- 
marking  than  the  purchase  of  my  biennial  suit 
of  store-clothes.  There  was  a  reason  for  call- 
ing this  biennial.  I  got  a  suit  only  every  other 
year,  of  course,  like  the  other  boys  in  that  neck 
of  the  woods.  Up  to  this  time  my  folks  had 
never  taken  me  with  them  when  they  com- 
mitted that  outrage  on  me.  Now,  there  are  so 
many  perfectly  good  reasons  for  not  taking  a 

21 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

boy  to  town  in  daylight,  when  it  is  two  years 
since  his  last  suit  of  clothes,  that  I  shan't  ex- 
plain it  to  you  at  all.  They  had  always  left 
me  at  home  and  bought  those  clothes  by  guess. 
And  they  were  horrible  guessers.  Toward  the 
last  they  had  been  making  such  a  mess  of  this 
trying  to  fit  me  with  a  suit  of  ready-made 
hand-me-downs  while  I  was  nine  miles  away 
growing  four  inches  that  same  afternoon,  that 
the  neighbors  had  begun  to  complain  bitterly 
that  I  interfered  with  scenery  around  there. 

The  folks  had  grown  so  discouraged  and 
downcast  and  disheartened  about  it  they  said 
they  weren't  going  to  try  it  any  more.  They 
were  going  to  let  me  go  alone,  the  next  time  I 
was  due  for  a  suit. 

They  did  as  they  had  threatened — let  me  go 
by  myself  for  it.  As  I  approached  the  door 
of  that  clothing  "emporium,"  as  it  was  labeled 
over  the  front  elevation  of  this  story-and-a- 
half  sky-scraper — scared  to  death— stepping 
higher  than  a  blind  horse  in  a  pumpkin  patch, 

22 


THAT  INSULTING  MIRROR 

and  with  my  eyes  sticking  out  so  far  you  could 
sit  on  one  and  saw  the  other  one  off — I  was 
met  by  a  wide  gentleman  with  an  eagle  beak 
instead  of  a  nose  and  a  smile  all  over  what  was 
left  of  him.  He  told  me  he  was  glad  to  see  me. 
I  was  surprised  at  that.  I  had  never  met  the 
gentleman  before  and  I  couldn't  see  why  he 
was  glad.  I  had  never  met  anybody  who  was 
glad  to  see  me.  But  I've  since  that  time 
learned  more  about  the  retail  ready-made  cloth- 
ing trade,  and  it  is  all  clear  to  me.  It  was 
nearly  all  "clear"  to  him,  then.  He  went  on 
to  say  he  had  a  suit  of  clothes  back  there  that 
he  had  been  saving  for  me.  I  didn't  be- 
lieve that  then,  but  I  do  now.  He  would  have 
had  that  same  suit  yet,  if  I  hadn't  gone  and 
taken  it  away  from  him  myself. 

While  he  was  digging  down  into  the  very 
bottom  of  this  tall  stack  of  moth-eaten,  super- 
annuated relics  where  all  these  years — fifteen 
or  twenty  years  at  the  very  least — he  had  been 
so  faithfully  saving  this  suit  for  me,  I  amused 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

myself  by  looking  about  the  room.  I'd  never 
been  in  a  big  store  before,  in  all  my  life.  Just 
across  the  aisle  from  where  I  stood,  I  saw  the 
funniest  thing  I  had  ever  seen.  It  was  in  some 
ways  in  the  shape  of  "the  human  form  divine," 
but  not  enough  to  hurt.  It  had  on  a  pair  of 
trousers  that — well,  to  use  a  railroad  man's  de- 
scription of  those  trousers,  they  were  all  right 
along  the  main  lines,  but  they  were  sadly  lack- 
ing in  terminal  facilities.  They  didn't  make 
the  right  kind  of  junction  either  with  the  boots 
at  one  end  or  with  the  coat  at  the  other.  Al- 
though there  were  excellent  switching  facilities 
near  the  northern  terminus.  The  coat  looked 
like  a  narrow  collar  with  sleeves  to  it.  The 
boots  were  those  wrinkled,  squushed-up  things 
that  look  like  accordions,  with  mud  on  'em. 
When  I  saw  that  thing  standing  there  looking 
right  at  me,  I  laughed  just  as  hard  as  I  could, 
and  so  did  it.  And  then  it  dawned  on  me  that 
I  was  having  my  first  look  in  a  full-length  mir- 
ror. I've  never  been  proud  since. 

24 


THE  BREAKING  AWAY 

THE  BREAKING  AWAY 

But  there  came  to  me  a  time  such  as  comes 
to  every  other  gawky,  pigeon-toed,  ungainly, 
self-conscious,  supersensitive  country  lad  whose 
ambition  takes  complete  charge  of  him  and 
leads  him  whithersoever  it  will,  when  the  farm 
and  I  had  to  part.  Now,  we  human  beings  are 
a  queer  lot  of  freaks,  and  we  have  a  queer  lot  of 
habits.  The  habits  have  to  be  queer,  for  they 
were  made  to  fit  us — made  to  measure.  And 
among  the  queerest  of  those  queer  habits  is  that 
of  traveling  through  life  looking  backward  in 
search  of  our  happiness.  Sitting  always  on 
the  hind  platform  of  the  last  car  in  life's  train, 
wearing  blinkers  like  a  plow-horse,  facing  in- 
variably toward  the  rear,  never  seeing  any  of 
the  beauties  along  on  either  side  the  right  of 
way  until  we  are  nearly  ready  to  go  around  a 
sharp  curve  or  into  a  dark  tunnel.  We  never 
notice  any  of  the  beauty  or  sweetness  of  life 
while  it  is  close,  within  easy  reach  and  tender 

25 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

touch.  No,  we're  not  quite  intelligent  enough 
for  that,  and  maybe  we  never  shall  be.  It  is 
always  in  retrospect,  from  the  next  part  of  our 
life,  when  the  best  and  the  sweetest  are  gone 
forever. 

Anyway,  that  was  the  way  with  my  old 
home  life  and  me,  as  it  has  been  perhaps 
with  most  of  you  people  who  have  broken  that 
old  home  tie  permanently  and  must  be  with  the 
rest  of  you  when  that  time  of  life  overtakes 
you.  And  the  memory  of  those  days  that 
seemed  to  me  so  much  like  a  prison  when 
I  was  in  the  midst  of  them  with  no  hope 
of  escape,  has  seemed  to  me  a  great  deal  more 
like  my  finest  possible  conception  of  heaven, 
as  I  have  looked  back  at  them  through 
the  "mist  of  years"  that  we  read  about,  and 
sometimes  through  the  mist  of  tears,  that  we 
know  about.  And  this  is  the  way  that  memory 
crystallized  itself  into  words  for  me. 

Now  if  you  folks  don't  care  too  much,  or 
object  too  violently,  I  am  going  to  give  you 

26 


ME  AN'  PAP  AN'  MOTHER 

this  in  dialect — not  because  I  hate  you  for  any- 
thing, for  I  don't ;  or  because  I  love  dialect  for 
its  own  sake,  for  I  do  not,  although  I  have  lived 
in  Indiana  more  than  once.  But  because  when 
I  think  of  those  dear  old  days  down  on  that 
hilly,  worn-out  Southern  Ohio  farm  and  the 
sweet  childhood  associations  that  nobody  ever 
has  had  world-wisdom  enough  to  appreciate 
while  they  are  present  and  passing,  those 
memories  fairly  clamor  to  be  allowed  to  talk 
things  over  with  me  in  that  same  code  of  signals 
that  we  used  instead  of  the  English  language. 
And  here  is  the  whole  short,  simple,  unembel- 
lished  story : 

ME  AN'  PAP  AN'  MOTHER 

When  I  was  a  little  tike 

I  set  at  th'  table 
'Tween  my  mother  an'  my  pap ; 

Eat  all  I  was  able. 
Pap  he  fed  me  on  one  side, 

Mammy  on  th'  other. 
Tell  ye,  we  was  chums,  them  days — 

Me  an'  pap  an'  mother. 
27 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

Sundays,  we'd  take  great,  long  walks 

Through  th'  woods  an'  pasters ; 
Pap  he  al'ays  packed  a  cane, 

Mother'n  me  picked  asters. 
Sometimes  they's  a  sister  'long, 

Sometimes  they's  a  brother; 
But  they  al'ays  was  us  three — 

Me  an'  pap  an'  mother. 

Pap,  he  didn't  gabble  much; 

Hel'  his  head  down,  thinkin'. 
Didn't  seem  t'  hear  us  talk, 

Nor  th'  cow-bells  clinkin'. 
Love-streaks  all  'peared  worried  out 

'Bout  one  thing  er  nuther; 
Didn't  al'ays  understand 

Pap — that's  me  an'  mother. 

I  got  big  an*  went  away ; 

Left  the  farm  behind  me. 
Thinkin'  o'  that  partin',  yit, 

Seems  t'  choke  an'  blind  me. 
Course  I'd  be  all  safe  an'  good 

With  m'  married  brother, 
But  we  had  to  part,  us  three — 

Me  an'  pap  an'  mother. 


28 


ME  AN'  PAP  AN'  MOTHER 

Hurried  back,  one  day ;  found  pap 

Changed,  an'  pale  an'  holler ; 
Seen  right  off  he'd  have  t'  go — 

Where  we  couldn't  foller. 
Lovin'  streaks  all  showed  up  then — 

Ah,  we  loved  each  other ! 
Talked  fast,  jest  t'  keep  back  tears — 

Me  an'  pap  an'  mother. 

Pap  he's — dead ;  but  mother  ain't ; 

Soon  will  be,  I  reckon ; 
Claims  already  she  can  see 

Pap's  forefinger  beckon. 
Life  hain't  long — I'll  go  myself 

One  these  days  eruther, 
Then  we'll  have  good  times  agin, 

Me  an'  pap  an'  mother. 

Purtier  hills  we'll  have  t'  climb, 

Saunterin'  'long  old  fashion, 
Hear  th'  wild  birds  singin'  round, 

See  th'  river  splashin' — 
If  God  'd  only  let  us  three 

Be  'lone,  like  we'd  ruther, 
Heaven'd  be  a  great  ol'  place 

For  me  an'  pap  an'  mother. 


29 


COLLEGE  DAYS 

And  now,  although  this  is  going  to  surprise 
you  folks  within  an  inch  of  your  lives,  if  you're 
kind  enough  to  believe  it  without  any  evidence 
before  you,  I  went  to  college  awhile!  I  went 
until  I  had  spent  all  my  own  money  and  that 
of  my  close  friends  who  weren't  too  miserably 
close.  It  was  while  I  was  there  that  I  tried  to 
take  lessons  in  elocution.  But  they  didn't 
take.  I  broke  all  the  chandeliers  in  the 
recitation  rooms  trying  to  give  the  regular 
gestures  to  a  lot  of  cut-and-dried  elocution- 
ary spasms,  such  as  "Barbarous  Frietchie," 
"Paul  Revere's  Ride,"  "Sheridan's  Ditto," 
"Give  Me  Three  Grains  of  Corn,  Mother," 
"Lasca,"  "Curfew  Shall  Not  Ring  This  Even- 
ing if  I  can  help  it,"  and  that  other  old  familiar 
selection  we  used  to  grub  out  of  McGuifey's 
Fourth  Reader,  "The  Boy  Stewed  on  the 
Burning  Deck." 

I  am  still  scared  about  gestures.  You  have 
30 


COLLEGE  DAYS 

probably  noticed  that  I  make  most  of  mine  in 
my  pockets.  I  had  the  gestures  scared  out  of 
me  when  I  was  little.  I  was  the  youngest  of  a 
large,  long-limbed,  muscular  and  impulsive 
family,  and  a  great  many  gestures  were  made 
about  our  place  that  stopped  when  they  reached 
me. 

Some  right  forcible  gestures,  too.  I  was 
merely  a  sort  of  back-stop  for  gestures.  I 
hated  to  see  a  gesture  start.  If  I  couldn't  see 
its  finish,  I'd  feel  it.  And  then  I  was  always 
deeply  impressed  and  warned  by  the  old  story 
of  the  preacher  who  owned  just  two  gestures — 
they  were  his  whole  box  of  tricks.  One 
straight  up,  one  straight  down,  following  each 
other  in  regular  succession  and  alternation,  no 
matter  what  he  was  talking  about.  And  once 
they  "broke  bad"  for  him.  He  finished  and 
ruined  a  perfectly  good  sermon  by  saying,  with 
an  upward  point,  "When  the  roll  is  called  up 
yonder,  I'll,"  pointing  downward,  "be  there." 
It  put  him  plumb  out  of  business. 

31 


AN  ANTI-CARUSO  CAREER 

It  was  also  while  I  was  in  college  that  I  used 
to  sing.  I  beg  your  pardon.  I  used  to  try 
to  sing.  I  quit.  I  had  reasons  for  it.  So 
had  everybody  that  heard  me.  I  am  what  you 
might  call  a  reformed  vocalist.  I  tried  ten 
years  before  I  gave  it  up  as  an  utter  fizzle. 
Now,  that  ten  years  I  squandered  may  seem  to 
you  a  long  time  to  find  out  one  can't  sing,  and 
quit  it.  But  it  isn't  long  for  that  job.  That's 
the  slowest  job  there  is — finding  out  one  can't 
sing  and  quitting  it.  Why,  just  think  a  mo- 
ment how  long  it  is  taking  the  one  I  made  you 
think  of  just  then,  to  find  that  out  and  quit! 
Any  of  you  here  can  silently  pick  out — now, 
don't  point!  That  would  be  nasty! — half-a- 
dozen  anyway,  right  here  in  your  home  neigh- 
borhood, of  those  home-grown  coyotes  that 
think  they  are  canaries.  Some  of  'em  have 
been  yowling  around  in  this  vicinity  for  as 
much  as  twenty  years,  and  haven't  found  out 

32 


AN  ANTI-CARUSO  CAREER 

the  truth  yet.  And  there's  no  way  to  stop  'em 
unless  you  kill  'em.  And  that  isn't  right.  It 
is  nearly  as  bad  to  kill  anybody  like  that  as  it 
is  to  kill  a  person ! 

I  found  out  three  things  that  made  me  quit : 
First,  that  I  couldn't  sing ;  second,  that  it  takes 
two  things — voice  and  ambition — to  make  a 
real  singer;  I  had  only  the  ambition — I  had  no 
voice  in  the  matter;  and  third  and  most  im- 
portant was  the  discovery  that  a  flexible  voice 
doesn't  always  go  with  a  "rubber  neck."  And 
then  I  quit.  But  I  made  the  usual  number  of 
breaks  in  public  before  quitting.  Why,  I  used 
to  have  a  sneaking  suspicion — to  say  nothing 
of  a  haunting  fear — that  maybe  the  man  who 
wrote  that  beautiful  poem  beginning  "Break, 
break,  break,"  meant  something  personal  by  it. 
I  thought  sure  he  had  heard  me  somewhere.  I 
didn't  see  how  else  he  ever  got  that  idea  of  one 
break  right  after  another  all  the  time. 

I  used  to  make  noises  in  a  church  choir.  I 
did  that  for  four  weeks  before  they  found  out 

33 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

what  was  the  matter  with  the  music.  They 
thought  all  the  time  that  something  had  got 
stuck  in  one  of  the  organ  pipes.  That  was  the 
first  time  I  had  known  I  could  throw  my  voice. 
If  I  had  known  it  before,  I'd  have  thrown  it 
away.  But  it  all  came  out  the  first  time  I  was 
called  on  for  a  solo.  You  can  see  how  it  would 
be  then.  No  use  to  try  to  conceal  it  any 
longer.  They  caught  me  with  the  goods  on 
me. 

CHURCH  CHOIRITIS 

It  was  one  Friday  night  at  choir  practice, 
and  we  were  howling  and  gouging  and  thump- 
ing away  on  one  of  those  mussed-up  anthems, 
entitled  "There  is  a  Gate  That  Stands  Ajar." 

You  know  how  they  build  those  anthem 
things.  -You've  seen  'em  do  it.  You  just  take 
any  little  sentence,  it  doesn't  matter  how  long 
or!  >w  short  it  is — just  so  it's  a  sentence.  And 
figuratively  speaking  you  run  it  through  a  sau- 
sage-mill or  a  fodder-shredder  and  cut  it  all  up 

34 


CHURCH  CHOIRITIS 

into  little  fragments.  Then  you  take  those  gib- 
lets and  put  'em  back  together  again,  just  any- 
way at  all,  so  they  are  tother  end  to  and  don't 
make  any  sense,  and  then  you  do  it  over  again. 
You  keep  on  mangling  and  pulverizing  and 
vivisecting  that  poor  inoffensive  sentence  that 
never  did  you  any  harm  in  its  whole  life,  until 
its  best  friend  wouldn't  recognize  it  if  he  met  it 
in  the  big  road,  in  daylight.  And  when  you've 
been  at  this  about  eleven  and  a  half  minutes 
by  the  clock,  until  the  whole  choir  has  begun 
to  turn  purple  around  the  gills  and  gasp  a 
little  and  show  signs  of  lung-failure,  you  get 
together  with  one  final  spasmodic,  heroic,  over 
the  top  effort,  with  what  breath  you  can  scare 
up  among  you,  and  say,  "Ah — men — !"  just  as 
hard  as  you  can.  And  that's  an  anthem.  It's 
just  a  scrambled  hymn,  that's  all.  Anyway, 
that  is  the  way  that  they  had  erected  the  one  we 
were  teasing  that  night.  And  the  leader  of 
this  choir  turned  to  me  with  a  look  on  his  face 
of  a  man  who  has  been  suspecting  something 

35 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

for  a  good  while  and  is  about  to  find  out  the 
truth,  and  said:  "Will  you  kindly  take  this 
first  solo  part?" 

Well,  I  certainly  did  hate  to  do  it.  For  I 
knew  what  was  wrong,  and  I  knew  what  would 
happen  if  I  did  it.  Like  other  poor  singers,  I 
wanted  to  stay  in  the  choir. — Now  that  snicker 
of  yours  was  a  direct  insult  to  somebody  in 
your  neighborhood ! — But  he  was  running  that 
choir.  I  had  to  obey  orders.  So  I  took  that 
solo.  I  had  never  been  exposed  to  a  solo  be- 
fore in  my  life.  I  broke  out  with  it  right  away. 
I  had  it  bad.  I  hadn't  got  to  the  end  of  the 
first  line  of  that  "There  is  a  Gate  that  Stands 
Ajar"  before  the  leader  called  out  in  a  loud  and 
agonized  tone  of  voice,  "Hold  on!  I  I"  Now, 
that  surprised  me  a  whole  lot  more  than  any- 
thing I  had  ever  heard.  The  little  I  had 
learned  about  music  was  the  time-marks.  And 
I  know  as  well  as  you  musical  high-brows  know, 
that  when  you  have  a  coal-black  note  on  the 
lower  end  of  an  upright  stick,  and  a  couple  of 

36 


A  REGULAR  QUARTET 

narrow  flags  on  the  upper  end  of  that  same 
stick,  and  no  period  after  it,  you  have  no  busi- 
ness holding  on. 

But  he  was  running  that  job.  The  old  choir 
wasn't  mine.  So  I  held  on  like  a  bull-dog  or  a 
mud-turtle.  And  it  wasn't  more  than  half  a 
second  more  before  he  called  out  a  whole  lot 
louder,  "Let  go!  !  !  !  I"  And  I  did.  Then  I 
asked  him  why  in  the  world  he  had  stopped  me 
that  way  before  I  had  a  good  start,  and  he  said, 
"Anybody  who  had  good  sense  ought  to  know 
that  no  gate  could  stand  a  jar  like  that." 

A  REGULAR  QUARTET 

But  I  used  to  belong  to  a  college  quartet. 
Now,  I'm  not  bragging  about  this.  I  say  it  in 
abject  shame,  as  anybody  should  who  owns  up 
to  having  belonged  to  a  quartet  or  any  other 
criminal  organization.  I  used  to  think  maybe 
ours  was  the  worst  quartet  there  could  be. 
But  I've  since  heard  quartets  that  cheered  me 
up,  no  end !  I  know  now  that  ours  could  have 

37 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

sung  ever  since  then  and  got  worse  every  ap- 
pearance and  never  missed  a  date.  But  I've 
always  held  firmly  to  the  belief  that  ours  should 
have  been  the  worst.  Nothing  has  ever  shaken 
my  faith  in  that.  There  was  no  demand  for  a 
worse  one.  They  never  invited  us  back  any- 
where. They  used  to  dare  us  back,  but  they 
couldn't  fool  us.  We  knew  what  they  wanted. 
I  don't  know  whether  you  folks  ever  thought 
of  it  this  way — maybe  you  didn't.  But  there 
are  remarkable  points  of  resemblance  between 
a  male  quartet  and  a  baseball  outfit.  There 
must  be  in  each  organization,  as  anybody 
knows,  a  first  and  a  second  base.  Our  male 
quartet  carried  this  comparison  a  great  deal 
further  than  that.  We  nearly  got  into  the 
national  league.  They  did  let  us  into  the  Ep- 
worth  League  once  for  fifteen  or  twenty 
minutes !  Our  music  was  never  catchy  and  we 
never  made  a  hit  because  it  never  was  pitched 
right.  And  we  never  succeeded  in  getting 
properly  through  a  score  because  we  made  so 

38 


A  REGULAR  QUARTET 

many  errors  on  runs.  We  had  plenty  of  speed 
but  no  control.  And  the  kind-hearted  but  im- 
patient public  supplied  us  with  a  short  stop. 
In  fact,  there  was  no  field  for  us,  although  we 
batted  around  a  great  deal.  And  the  angry 
audience  gave  us  a  home-run  every  place  we 
sang! 

The  first  place  we  tried  to  sing  publicly  was 
at  the  Methodist  Sunday  School  in  the  college 
town  where  they  were  letting  us  stay  tempo- 
rarily. The  superintendent  of  the  Sunday 
School  had  told  us  himself  that — well,  I  found 
out  afterward  that  he  had  been  going  to  resign 
anyway — he  told  us  we  might  go  up  and  close 
the  Sunday  School.  We  did!  We  cer-tainly 
did! 

The  next  effort  we  made  was  a  serenade 
under  the  windows  of  some  people  we  were 
mad  at,  out  in  the  part  of  town  where  there 
was  no  police  protection.  We  made  our  cus- 
tomary set  of  noises  there  for  nearly  an  hour 
without  any  interruption  at  all — they  didn't 

39 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

even  shoot  at  us !— and  we  thought  we  might  be 
improving.  But  next  day  one  of  the  boys 
found  out  that  the  folks  had  moved  away  the 
week  before. 

There  was  a  red-headed  fellow  in  our  quar- 
tet. He  was  the  reddest-headed  person  or  the 
redheadedest  person — now,  just  look  what  a 
break  I've  made!  I  intended  to  say  that  man 
was  the  reddest-headed  person  that  ever  oc- 
curred. But  after  looking  over  this  audience 
I  can't  make  the  statement  at  all !  I  can  only 
say,  now,  that  he  was  the  reddest-headed  per- 
son I  had  ever  seen  at  that  time.  He  was  so 
red-headed  that — well,  you  can't  believe  every- 
thing you  hear,  but  they  told  me  he  had  to  wear 
an  asbestos  hat.  The  fire  insurance  companies 
raised  the  rate  on  every  frame  house  he  got  a 
room  in.  They  just  kept  him  moving  all  the 
time  with  the  hose-cart  about  a  block  behind 
the  express  wagon  hauling  his  trunk.  He 
tried  to  take  an  egg-shampoo  once,  and  you 
could  smell  scorched  omelet  for  a  mile.  The 

40 


A  REGULAR  QUARTET 

last  I  ever  heard  of  him  he  was  down  in  Wash- 
ington, De  Ceased,  trying  to  get  a  patent  on 
a  fire-proof  pillow-case  he  had  invented.  He 
was  our  second  tenor  and  he  came  from 
Kansas. 

Now  the  worst  thing  about  him  was  not 
the  fact  that  he  came  from  Kansas — you  know 
coming  from  Kansas  is  a  sign  of  good  sense 
if  you  come  quickly  and  stay.  But  he  had 
a  real  fault  aside  from  his  entirely  uninten- 
tional sorrelness — you  know  a  person  may  be 
perfectly  red-headed  and  perfectly  respectable 
at  the  same  time.  He  was  as  absent-minded 
as  he  was  red-headed — and  that  was  his  real 
handicap. 

Why,  he  was  as  absent-minded  as  the  man 
who  had  been  out  camping  for  several  weeks 
among  the  wood-ticks,  leeches,  chiggers  and 
other  penetrating  and  investigative  fauna, 
and  the  first  morning  he  was  at  home  for 
breakfast  he  poured  maple-syrup  over  his 
ankles  and  scratched  his  pancakes!  He  was 

41 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

possibly  as  absent-minded  as  the  man  you've  all 
heard  about  who  went  home  late  one  drench- 
ing, sopping  rainy  night,  tenderly  put  his  wet 
umbrella  to  bed  and  then  went  and  stood  in  the 
sink  all  night.  Maybe  as  absent-minded  as  the 
man  who  went  out  to  milk  late  one  night,  hung 
the  milk-pail  up  in  the  cow-stall  and  milked 
in  his  lantern! 

Or  he  may  have  been — don't  misunderstand 
me!  I  say  he  may  have  been,  there's  no  affi- 
davit goes  with  this  statement — as  absent- 
minded  as  the  economical  friend  I  used  to  have. 
Now,  "economical"  is  the  Sunday  name  for 
what  was  the  matter  with  him.  That  word 
doesn't  even  suggest  him.  The  word  stingy  is 
too  weak  a  term.  There  is  no  word!  If  he 
had  been  going  to  "give  until  it  hurt"  he  would 
have  given  a  nickel  and  died  in  awful  agony. 
Why,  this  man  was  so  close  he  was  almost 
adjacent!  I  say  I  used  to  have  this  friend.  I 
haven't  him  now.  He  died  of  thirst  right 
after  they  put  a  water  meter  in  his  resi- 

42 


dence.  If  they'd  throw  samples  of  medicine 
around  town  and  leave  any  on  his  porch,  he'd 
go  out  and  take  every  bit  of  that  medicine, 
according  to  directions,  whether  he  had  any- 
thing like  that  the  matter  with  him  or  not — 
or  whether  he  was  even  able  to  have  it.  But 
one  time  this  economical  person  attended  a 
public  sale.  You  knew  that  without  me  tell- 
ing you.  You  know  that  sort  of  hairpin  never 
would  miss  a  public  sale.  A  public  sale  is  a 
reunion  of  tightwads. 

THE  PERILS  OF  ECONOMY 

I  say  this  man  attended  a  public  sale  and 
there  he  saw  a  golden  opportunity  to  buy  a  fine 
set  of  false  teeth,  scarcely  used,  at  a  bargain. 
And  he  bought  them.  For  some  reason  or  an- 
other, those  teeth  didn't  just  exactly  fit  him 
in  places.  In  his  mouth,  they  didn't  fit  him 
at  all.  But  he  kept  them,  all  right.  He 
never  gave  anything  up.  He  wore  them 
around  in  his  pocket.  They  chewed  just  as 

43 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

well  there  as  anywhere,  and  didn't  hurt  him  so 
badly.  One  time  he  was  wearing  these  misfit 
false  teeth  around  in  the  hip-pocket  of  a  pair 
of  bargain-counter  overalls  that  he  had  picked 
up  at  a  sale  somewhere.  He  had  to  keep 
picking  them  up  all  the  time  he  had  'em  on, 
too.  They  were  about  nine  or  eleven  sizes  too 
big  for  him.  He  had  to  gaLus  them  up  around 
his  Adam's  apple  to  keep  them  on.  One  day 
he  was  going  around  with  this  garment  on, 
tuned  up  to  concert  pitch,  the  teeth  in  his  hip- 
pocket,  when  he  stepped  on  a  banana  peel  and 
bit  a  wart  off  from  the  back  of  his  neck !  And 
you'd  be  surprised  to  know  how  it  graveled 
him  to  part  with  that  dear  old  seed-wart. 
He'd  been  using  it  as  a  collar-button  for  twelve 
years. 

A  HEART-BROKEN  AUTHOR 

But  the  worst  thing  about  the  absent-mind- 
edness of  this  young  fellow  in  our  quartet  was 
the  way  it  would  break  in  on  our  singing.  We 

44 


A  HEART-BROKEN  AUTHOR 

would  be  working  away  on  some  piece  we  didn't 
know  very  well — and  you  wouldn't  believe  me 
if  I  told  you  how  many  pieces  we  didn't  know 
very  well.  That  was  our  specialty! — I  say 
we'd  be  working  away  on  one  of  those  six  or 
seven  thousand  familiar  airs  that  we  knew  well 
enough  to  do  anything  to  except  sing  them; 
we'd  all  be  watching  the  words  and  music  for 
fear  we'd  make  some  new  kind  of  break,  that 
is  if  there  were  any  new  kinds,  when  instead 
of  singing  what  we  were  looking  at  he  would 
sing  whatever  he  thought  about  at  the  time! 
You  can  see  that  would  get  us  into  some  hor- 
rible scrapes. 

One  time  we  were  working  away  in  public 
on  a  touching  little  ditty  that  used  to  be  pop- 
ular then — almost  silly  enough  to  be  popular 
now,  but  not  quite  that  bad — a  slushy  little 
ballad  called,  "Two  Little  Girls  In  Blue." 
His  mind  took  an  unscheduled  excursion  to 
his  cyclonic  home  in  Kansas  and  he  got  it, 
"Blue  Little  Girls  In  Two"!  And  then  I 

45 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

remember  with  painful  distinctness  one  time 
we  were  giving  what  we  called  a  concert,  in 
public.  I  don't  know  what  the  public  called 
it.  I'd  run  a  mile  to  keep  from  finding  out 
their  name  for  it.  But  that's  what  we  were 
doing,  whatever  its  right  name  is. 

All  of  the  audience  was  sound  asleep  except 
one  man — stranger  to  us  sitting  about  half-way 
down  the  aisle,  sobbing  and  blubbering  as  if  he 
had  lost  his  season  ticket.  We  boys  were  very 
proud  for  a  little  bit.  But  after  the  affair  was 
all  over,  we  drew  cuts,  as  we  always  did,  to  see 
whose  turn  it  was  to  go  down  the  aisle  and 
wake  them  and  tell  them  they  could  go  home 
now.  I  got  the  short  and  unlucky  one  that 
night.  As  I  wandered  along  the  aisle  on  that 
dangerous  errand,  risking  my  life  every  time  I 
got  anybody  wide  awake,  I  couldn't  resist  the 
temptation  to  lay  my  hand  on  the  arm  of  this 
poor  fellow  whose  cheeks  still  glittered  with 
his  honest  grief.  I  said,  "My  brother,  you 
seem  to  have  been  deeply  affected  by  our  sing- 

46 


A  HEART-BROKEN  AUTHOR 

ing !"     "Yes,"  he  sobbed  bitterly,  "I  wrote  that 
piece!" 

But  even  now, 

My  voice  is  like  the  filing  of  a  saw ; 

My  friends  flee  when  I  agitate  my  jaw; 
I  can  empty  any  room  with  my  rusty  basso  boom, 

And  my  vocalizing  breaks  the  nuisance  law. 
But   there's   one — she's   pretty,   too;   and   as   wise, 
some  ways,  as  you, 

Who  thinks  my  voice  the  finest  in  the  land — 
She  comes   with  fist  in  eye  begging,  "Papa,  baby 
bye !  " 

When  the  sleepy-man  is  scattering  his  sand. 

When  the  evening  romp  is  winding  to  a  close 

And  my  little  baby's  cheek  with  laughter  glows, 
When  her  night-gown  from  the  press  has  replaced 
her  daytime  dress, 

Then  the  little  darling  rubs  her  eyes  and  nose ; 
She  comes  with  dimpled  hands  and  in  mute  appeal- 
ing stands 

As  she  says :     "I  dot  some  somefin'  in  my  eye ! 
Take  me  up  a  'ittle  bit,  'cause  I'm  sleepy  I  can  get, 

An'  O  p'case,  sing  to  me,  papa — baby  bye." 


47 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

Yes,  my  voice  is  like  the  filing  of  a  saw, 

And  my  friends  are  fewer  when  I  use  my  jaw; 
I  have  emptied  many  a  room  with  my  raucous  basso 

boom 

And  my  vocalizing  cracks  the  nuisance  law. 
But  while  that  one,  sweet  and  true,  thinks  my  voice 

as  good  as  new, 

I'll  not  envy  any  singer  in  the  land ; 
For  she  comes  with  fist  in  eye,  begging,  "Papa,  baby 

bye," 
When  the  sleepy-man  is  scattering  his  sand. 

JUST  AMONG  Us  PARENTS 
But  that  was  when  my  children  were  real 
small.  Just  as  soon  as  they  got  big  enough 
to  have  what  people  call  "an  ear  for  music," 
that  all  had  to  stop.  The  only  way  I  could  put 
a  child  to  sleep  after  that  was  to  hold  it  by  main 
strength  while  I  sang  one  verse  and  tell  it  if  it 
didn't  go  right  to  sleep  I'd  sing  the  next  verse. 
It  worked  just  like  morphine  or  knock-out 
drops.  One  time  when  I  had  put  one  of 
them  to  sleep  by  that  or  some  other  Ladies' 
Home  Journal  recipe,  I  had  lugged  her  up- 

48 


JUST  AMONG  US  PARENTS 

stairs  to  her  own  room  and  was  sitting  be- 
side her  bed — you  know  that  white  iron  one, 
with  the  railings  at  the  sides  that  you  can  let 
down  if  you  want  her  to  fall  out  in  the  night, 
and  the  brass  knobs  on  the  posts — sitting  in  an 
old  busted  down  rocking  chair  that  had  got-to- 
looking  so  ornery  downstairs  that  we  had  car- 
ried it  upstairs  out  of  sight,  but  went  right  on 
using — sitting  there  holding  one  of  her  sweaty, 
dimpled  fists  in  one  of  my  big  paws,  looking  at 
her  flushed  and  sleeping  face,  gathering  there- 
from my  stock  of  patience  and  courage  and 
strength  for  the  next  day's  work  and  strain  and 
anxiety — now,  some  of  you  folks  know  just  ex- 
actly what  I'm  talking  about.  The  rest  of  you 
think  you  know,  but  you  don't!  Not  through 
lack  of  attention  or  intelligence — you  are  giv- 
ing me  the  one  and  you  have  plenty  of  the 
other.  It  is  only  that  life  hasn't  yet  prepared 
all  of  you  to  understand  this. 

Unless  you  have  been  in  the  midst  of  that 
sacred,  lumpy -throated  moment,  right  after  the 

49 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

little  thing  drops  over  the  edge  into  the  depths 
of  dreamland,  when  your  feelings  have  changed 
in  less  than  the  twinkling  of  an  eye  from 
peevishness  to  something  so  nearly  worship  you 
couldn't  tell  the  difference  if  you  tried — unless 
you  have  been  in  the  midst  of  that  wonderful 
moment  with  your  own  child,  you  don't  know 
what  I'm  talking  about  now,  any  more  than  if 
I  were  talking  in  ancient  Sanskrit  and  saying 
it  backwards. 

This  is  something  you  have  to  know  with 
your  heart,  after  you  have  lived  it.  With 
your  head  alone  you  couldn't  understand 
this  in  a  million  years;  and  never  in  a  million 
lifetimes  even  with  your  heart  unless  it  had 
come  into  your  own  life.  Those  of  you  who 
love  babies  know  that  there  is  nothing  else  in  all 
this  world  so  indescribably,  so  unaccountably 
pathetic  as  the  face  of  a  baby  when  it's  asleep ! 
You've  noticed  this.  No  matter  how  full  of 
fun  and  frolic  the  little  thing  may  be  from 
morning  till  night,  running  from  one  bit  of 

50 


JUST  AMONG  US  PARENTS 

trouble  to  another — in  a  hurry  to  get  into  the 
next  scrape — getting  hurt  every  few  minutes, 
falling  off  of  everything  but  the  ceiling — the 
very  instant  sleep  drops  her  soft  veil  over  the 
waxen  lids,  there  is  that  touch  of  inevitable  and 
ineffable  pathos!  We  know  not  whence  it 
comes  at  dark,  we  know  not  whither  it  flees  at 
dawn — we  just  simply,  stupidly,  humanly 
know:  "There  it  is  again!"  That's  all  we 
know  about  it.  But — say,  folks,  I  don't  be- 
lieve we'd  be  making  any  bad  mistake  if  we 
went  right  straight  ahead  out  of  the  depths  of 
our  ignorance  and  took  a  chance  on  thanking 
.God  for  that  bit  of  tenderness ;  for  I  believe  as 
much  as  I  believe  you  and  I  are  here  right  now 
for  a  common  purpose — a  lyceum  entertain- 
ment and  uplift — that  He  sent  it,  intending  to 
make  us  say,  "Well,  if  that  little  rascal  is  as 
much  of  a  pest  tomorrow  as  she  has  been  every 
day  now  for  a  week  or  two,  I'm  going  to  see 
if  it  doesn't  help  matters  some,  at  our  house, 
if  I'm  a  little  better  myself."  And  as  that 

51 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

thought  came  to  me,  these  lines  came  right 
along  with  it: 

Sleep,  little  baby,  sleep ! 

Thy  father  is  watching  near. 
His  hand  on  thine  is  love's  own  sign 

That  thou  hast  no  need  of  fear. 
In  the  years  to  come,  when  thou  hast  thine  own, 

When  there's  never  a  heart-beat  free  from  fear, 
Thou'lt  then  recall  thy  youth,  and  all 

The  love  of  a  heart  no  longer  near — 
Sleep,  little  baby,  sleep! 

But  before  I  could  get  out  of  the  room  to 
hurry  to  my  desk  and  write  down  those  lines 
that  had  come  as  an  inspiration,  I  noticed  the 
little  thing  stirring  uneasily  in  her  sleep.  Her 
lips  were  moving.  I  heard  the  rustle  of  a 
whisper.  Was  she  communing  with  the  angels 
while  she  slept?  The  words  I  caught  as  I  bent 
low  above  the  snowy  pillow  where  lay  the 
golden  ringlets  and  the  rose-bud  lips  were: 

"Daddy,  scratch  my  back!" 

Now,  that  was  an  awful  jolt  to  you,  I  know, 
52 


JUST  AMONG  US  PARENTS 

but  I  can't  help  it.  It  shocked  me  just  as 
much,  at  the  time.  For  then  I  had  no  more 
sense  than  you  had  just  now!  Not  a  bit! 
I  was  actually  expecting  something  angelic 
from  that  young  one  of  mine!  But  why 
should  I  have  expected  it?  She  was  my  child! 
What  makes  you  and  me  be  such  dupes  as 
to  expect  our  children  to  be  angelic?  Where 
would  the  poor  little  things  get  it?  Not 
from  us,  goodness  knows!  I'll  tell  you  right 
now  that  if  ever  your  child  or  mine  shows 
any  signs  of  being  angelic  and  keeps  up 
the  performance  very  long,  you  may  begin 
gravely  to  suspect  that  the  law  of  heredity 
has  been  either  repealed  or  declared  uncon- 
stitutional. It  keeps  you  and  me — saying 
nothing  about  any  absentees — clear  up  to  our 
level  best  and  then  some  to  be  half  way  wise 
enough  and  good  enough  to  be  the  right 
kind  of  parents  for  plain,  ordinary,  human 
children. 


53 


PARENTAL  INFATUATION 

But  did  you  ever  notice  that  when  you  are 
at  a  public  entertainment  where  children  take 
part,  no  matter  whether  you  are  acquainted 
in  that  neighborhood,  if  you  sit  up  close  to 
the  platform  where  you  can  let  an  eye  ramble 
around  over  the  congregation  or  the  audi- 
ence or  whatever  you  call  it  you  can  pick  out 
with  deadly  accuracy  the  parents  of  whatever 
little  rabbit  is  up  there  spouting  at  the  time? 
Ha!  You  can  do  it,  can't  you?  You  don't 
even  have  to  look  for  a  family  resemblance. 
All  you  need  to  do  is  to  squint  around  till  you 
locate  a  couple  of  necks  about  nine  feet  longer 
than  any  other  necks  in  the  place,  and — you've 
got  'em!  Those  are  the  parents.  You 
couldn't  miss  'em  in  a  thousand  years.  But 
did  you  ever  stop  to  figure  on  what  it  is  that 
stretches  those  necks  that  way?  Do  it  right 
now!  It's  father-  and  mother-love,  which  is 
the  finest  thing  in  this  whole  world.  It  has 

54 


PARENTAL  INFATUATION 

to  be.  For  it  is  the  highest  and  purest  and 
truest  earthly  type  of  that  great  big  infinite 
Father-love  that  we  all  have  to  cling  to  and 
depend  upon  now  and  forever  and  forever  and 
forever  more.  So  let  'em  stretch ! 

And  an  old  friend  of  mine  who  had  no  form 
of  culture  except  agriculture,  but  whose  heart 
was  located  exactly  where  all  real  parents' 
hearts  are  located,  told  me  how  he  felt  and 
what  he  thought  one  time  when  he  saw  his  own 
little  tad  take  part  in  a  program.  And  that 
old  hardboiled  ignoramus  came  so  nearly  feel- 
ing and  thinking  exactly  as  all  regular  par- 
ents feel  and  think  under  similar  circumstances, 
that  I  saved  what  he  said  and  took  it  home 
with  me  and  pickled  it  in  a  home-made  sirup 
of  rhythm  and  rhyme,  so  that  if  ever  I  hap- 
pened to  drift  into  this  town  of  yours  and  meet 
up  with  you  folks  this  way  and  nothing  inter- 
rupted us,  we  could  just  talk  it  over,  like  the 
old  neighbors  we  are.  And  this  is  what  he 
said: 

55 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

WHEN  OUR  GAL  SPOKE  A  PIECE 

I  ben  t'  doin's  off  an'  on, 

Like  apple-bees  an'  spellin's, 
T'  quart'ly  meetin's,  public  sales, 

Hangin's  an'  weddin'  bellin's; 
But  nothin' — sence  the  shootin'  scrape 

Down  on  Bill  Jones's  lease — 
Hez  worked  me  up  like  t'other  night 

When  our  gal  spoke  a  piece ! 

'Twuz  down  t'  th'  ol*  frame  meetin'  house — 

They  called  it  "childern's  day"; 
Th'  young  'uns  done  it  purtnigh  all, 

Except  th'  preacher's  say  ; 
An'  that  hull  program  wriggled  off 

Slicker'n  melted  grease. 
But  th'  place  where  I  fergot  t'  breathe 

'S  where  our  gal  spoke  a  piece! 

The  sup'intendent  spoke  right  up — 

I  heerd  him  call  her  name! 
An'  there  she  come  a  trottin'  out — 

T'  others  may  looked  th'  same, 
But  they  wa'n't  nary  nuther  one, 

Not  even  Thompson's  niece, 
That  looked  wuth  shucks  to  Moll  an'  me 

When  our  gal  spoke  a  piece. 
56 


WHEN  OUR  GAL  SPOKE  A  PIECE 

Me  an'  my  woman  set  down  front, 

Right  clost  th'  mourners'  bench; 
An'  list'nin'  to  that  young'un  speak 

Give  us  an'  awful  wrench! 
An'  when  we  heerd  'ein  cheer  an'  cheer 

We  set  like  two  ol'  geese, 
Wipin'  th'  silly  tears  away 

While  our  gal  spoke  a  piece! 

'Twuz  jest  some  little,  easy  thing, 

Like  "Twinkle,  Little  Star," 
Er  Mary's  leetle  cosset  lamb, 

Er  somethin'  like  that  thar, 
But  'twant  no  twinklin'  starlight  beams, 

Ner  tags  frum  lammie's  fleece, 
That  made  us  blow  our  noses  hard, 

When  our  gal  spoke  a  piece. 

I  haint  ben  what  I'd  orto  ben ; 

I've  staid  away  frum  church, 
An*  sometimes  Moll  an'  me  hez  thought 

They'd  left  us  in  the  lurch ; 
But — wal,  we've  kinder  rounded  up, 

An'  let  our  wand'rin's  cease, 
Sence  we  wuz  down  there  t'other  night 

An'  heerd  her  speak  a  piece. 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

As  To  SWELL-HEAD 

But  you  know  the  kind  of  egotism  that 
makes  parents  think  their  own  children  are 
the  crowning  work  of  the  whole  creative  scheme 
— you  know  parents  really  believe  that  the  only 
reason  there  were  any  people  in  the  world  be- 
fore their  young  ones  was  that  up  to  that  time 
the  Creator  was  merely  getting  in  practice  on 
'most  any  old  thing — I  say  that  sort  of  egotism 
isn't  the  kind  that  hurts  anything.  That  sort 
only  makes  this  world  a  swVet  enough  place  for 
us  to  live  in  long  enough  to  grow  up  to  where 
we  can  start  in  to  have  good  sense  if  ever  we 
are  going  to  have  it.  But  there  is  another  kind 
of  egotism  that  we  don't  have  to  handle  with 
soft  gloves  or  call  pet-names.  There  is  a  kind 
called  "swell-head,"  and  that's  a  disease!  An 
awful  disease. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  things  about 
swell-headitis  is  that  the  person  with  the  least 
excuse  for  it  has  it  the  worst.  Another  thing 

58 


AS  TO  SWELL-HEAD 

is  that  the  person  most  worth  approaching  is 
the  easiest  to  approach.  It  is  the  pin-head  who 
puts  a  barbed  wire  entanglement  of  what  he 
wants  you  to  think  is  dignity,  around  himself. 
Don't  let  him  fool  you  with  that.  That  isn't 
dignity.  That's  self-defence.  He  knows  in- 
stinctively that  he  won't  stand  close  inspec- 
tion. 

Another  thing  about  r well-head  is  that  the 
emptier  the  head  the  more  it  swells.  It's  so 
much  easier  to  pump  up  a  football  than  a  door- 
knob. And  another  thing  still  is  that  this  dis- 
ease is  so  intermittent !  You  can  have  it  very 
badly  one  day,  think  you've  entirely  recovered 
the  next  day,  take  down  the  quarantine  card, 
disinfect  the  place  and  fire  the  doctor,  and  the 
very  next  day  be  broken  out  with  the  terriblest 
case  of  it  you  ever  saw !  You  never  know  when 
you're  through  with  it  or  it  with  you. 

But  the  most  remarkable  symptom  of  all, 
about  swell-head,  is  that  it  is  always  the  other 
person  who  has  it.  Now,  every  one  of  you 

59 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

folks— bright  as  you  are— began  thinking  of 
somebody  else,  just  as  soon  as  I  said  "swell- 
head,"  didn't  you!  Of  course,  you  did. 
That's  one  of  the  symptoms. 

It's  a  remarkable  disease,  I  tell  you,  and 
neither  you  nor  I  can  explain  it.  And  lis-ten! 
I've  been  married  so  long,  .myself,  that  when- 
ever there  is  anything  I  can't  explain,  I  confess 
it.  Every  married  man  here  knows  he  might 
just  as  well.  It  saves  time,  if  not  trouble.  So 
I'm  going  to  break  down  and  confess  to  you 
right  now,  that  every  one  of  you  has  had  this 
disease.  You  see,  that  saves  you  a  lot  of  painful 
confession  and  doesn't  hurt  my  feelings  a  bit. 

But  I'll  play  fair  with  you.  I  used  to  have 
that  swell-head  thing  so  badly,  about  the  time 
I  escaped  from  college,  that  I  got  to  lying 
awake  nights  worrying  over  what  should  be- 
come of  the  world  if  anything  happened  to 
me!  Isn't  that  pathetic?  When  you  get  that 
way,  that's  the  limit.  You  can't  have  it 
any  worse  than  that.  I  dare  you  to.  Na- 

60 


EGOTISM'S  ANTIDOTE 

ture  won't  let  you.  When  you  get  about 
to  that  point  of  inflation  Nature  comes  along 
with  a  cross-cut  saw  or  a  crow-bar  or  a  coal- 
pick  or  some  other  delicate  instrument  like 
that,  and  punctures  you.  And  when  Nature 
operates  for  an  aggravated  case  of  swell-head, 
no  anaesthetic  is  applied.  You  get  all  the 
agony  that  is  corning  to  you  then.  And  once 
when  I  had  tumbled  to  the  depths  from  the 
heights  where  I  had  had  no  business  fooling 
around  in  the  first  place,  I  wrote  this  little 
thing  that  I  wish  you  would  all  take  home 
with  you — not  to  apply  to  yourselves.  No- 
body ever  does  that,  but — to  your  neighbor 
when  he  gets  that  way: 

EGOTISM'S  ANTIDOTE 

When  ye  kind  o'  git  t'  thinkin' 

Ye're  th'  whole  endurin'  thing, 
When  ye  think  th'  world  must  have  ye 

Same's  a  kite  must  have  a  string, 
Then  it's  time  t'  fix  fer  dodgin' 

An'  begin  t'  look  around — 
61 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

'Cause  them's  somepin'  goin'  t'  hit  ye 
That'll  surely  take  ye  down. 

When  ye  git  t'  livin',  reg'lar, 

'Way  up  in  th'  upper  air, 
An'  when  folks  without  a  field-glass 

Couldn't  find  ye  anywhere, 
Then  it's  time  to  git  ycr  parachute 

An'  see  't  it's  workin'  right, 
While  ye  glance  tow'rd  terry  firmy 

Pickin'  out  a  spot  t'  light. 

'Cause  most  folks  is  lots  like  water — 

Finds  their  levels  off  an'  on, 
Though  they  'vaporate  occasional' 

An'  we  wonder  where  they've  gone ; 
But  they're  bound  t'  light  back  somehow, 

Fog,  er  rain,  er  coolin'  dew — 
An'  when  I  say  "folks,"  I  reckon 

That's  includin'  me  and  you. 

And  if  there's  anyone  here  who  can't  re- 
member when  he  was  a  fool,  he's  one  yet ! 

THAT  PHOTOGRAPHIC  CRIME 

But  I  think  I  think  of  something  right  now 
that  will  take  the  swell-head  out  of  anybody 

62 


THE  FAMILY  GROUP 

who  isn't  mildewed  with  it.  And  that  is — if 
any  of  you  folks,  no  matter  how  good-looking 
you  are,  or  even  how  good-looking  you  think 
you  are  (and  isn't  there  a  lot  of  difference  in 
some  cases!)  will  just  pause  one  horrified  min- 
ute and  think  how  your  picture  looks  in  that 
old  "family  group"  you've  got  hid  out,  some- 
where at  home !  There — I  thought  that  would 
jolt  you.  Isn't  that  thing  a  fright  though! 
Now,  if  you  can  take  a  good  look  at  that  bunch 
of  scare-crows,  in  a  good  light,  and  stay  proud 
— there's  something  serious  the  matter  with 
you.  Yet  you  wouldn't  take  anything  in  the 
world  for  that  old  picture — indeed,  you 
wouldn't  take  anything  on  earth  for  that  pic- 
ture !  You  couldn't  get  anything  for  it ! 

THE  FAMILY  GROUP 

I  hain't  a  spark  o'  city  pride — at  least  so  people 

say; 
I  don't  care  who  finds  out  my  hair  is  full  o'  germs 

of  hay ; 

68 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

J  don't  care  who  discovers  that  I  growed  up  on  a 
farm 

An'  hain't  got  ust  t'  street-cars  ner  that  skeery  fire- 
alarm  ; 

But  one  sad  mem'ry  makes  me  gasp  like  when  I  had 
th'  croup, 

An*  that's  t'  think  how  we-all  looked  in  that  ol' 
fam'ly  group. 

T'  start  in  with,  they's  none  of  us  would  had  it  took 

that  day — 
Jist  happened  we  was  all  in  town,  'cause  Bill  was 

goin'  away 
With  his  best  bib  an'  tucker  on;  an'  so  he  says  t' 


'Le's  go  an'  git  a  fam'ly  group,  like  Williamses," 

says  he. 
O'  course  we  all  felt  proud  o'  Bill,  an'  fell  in  with  a 

whoop 
An'  flocked  right  up  them  gallery  stairs  t'  git  that 

fam'ly  group. 

Th'  photo-grapher  kind  o'  laughed  when  we  went 

flockin'  in — 
I've  spent  some  years,  in  later  life,  a-figgerin'  on 

that  grin. 


64 


THE  FAMILY  GROUP 

An'  Bill  he  bossed  th'  job  because  he  was  a-goin' 

away — 
Talked  up  an'  showed  that  pictur  man  he  wasn't 

any  jay. 

Th'  feller  went  an'  hid  awhile  in  some  ol'  smelly  coop, 
An'  got  'is  shooter   ready   fer  t'   take  our   fam'ly 

group. 

He  put  ma  in  th'  middle  with  pa  squattin'  by  her  side ; 
He  dragged  Mahaly  out  from  where  she'd  snuck  away 

t'  hide ; 
He  yanked  our  chins,  he  fixed  our  hands  an'  pulled 

our  faces   'round, 
An*  handled  us  all  over  like  he's  buyin'  us  by  th' 

pound. 

Then  went  an'  hid  behint  a  rag  an'  give  a  little  stoop 
An'  says  "That's  all— nex'  Saturday."     He'd  took 

our  fam'ly  group ! 

I  see  it  yit !     Bill  fixed  up,  lookin'  like  a  full-blowed 

rose 
Amongst  a  bunch  o'  rag-weeds ;  pa's  a-wrinklin'  up 

'is  nose; 
Mahaly's  finger's  in  'er  mouth ;  Moll's  got  a  sheepish 

grin; 
Tom's  mad,  an'  I've  got  on  some  boots  with  awful 

wrinkles  in. 

65 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

Ma's  worried  'cause  that  head-clamp  tilted  up  her 

bonnet-scoop — 
I'm  sorry  Bill  suggested  that  we  git  a  fam'ly  group. 

I  dunno  if  that  pictur  man's  in  bizness  yit  or  not, 
But  if  he  is,  an'  I  can  find  th'  one  partic'lar  spot 
Where  he's  at  work,  I'll  git  a  gun,  and  sneak  away 

some  night, 
An'  when  I  find  him,  he'll  skiddoo  or  him  an'  me  will 

fight! 
I'd  turn  that  weepon  loose  on  him  with  one  wild  injun 

whoop 
And  let  th'  sunshine  flicker  through  th'  man  that 

made  that  group. 

Ma  laughs  about  it,  but  she  keeps  it  hangin'  on  th' 

wall. 
Mahaly's  dead — her  baby's  there,  a-growin'  big  an' 

tall. 

All  of  us  is  scattered  out — some  of  us  gittin'  gray; 
An'  pa  sets  dreamin'  on  th'  porch,  through  every 

sunny  day. 

I  guess  God's  gittin'  ready  fer  t'  make  a  gentle  swoop 
An*  take  us  up  t'  where  they'll  be  a  better  fam'ly 

group. 


66 


NAMES  BEFORE  AND  AFTER 

NAMES  BEFORE  AND  AFTER 

But  speaking  of  the  little  things  at  home,  I 
want  to  tell  you  folks  the  shortest  story  there 
is.  Not  the  shortest  article  there  is — don't 
misunderstand  me.  The  shortest  article  there 
is  is  a  poem  I  wrote  not  long  ago,  myself,  by 
hand — almost  entirely  by  hand.  The  title  of 
this  shortest-possible  poem  is  "The  Antiquity 
of  Microbes,"  and  the  poem  itself  is: 

Adam 
Had  'em. 

But  the  story  I  was  going  to  tell  you  is  this: 
Once  upon  a  time  there  was  a  little  baby  who 
was  called  Henry; — until  he  was  born,  and 
then  they  changed  his  name  to  Henrietta.  But 
for  some  reason  or  another,  or  without  any 
reason — for  parents  aren't  guided  by  reason. 
And  don't  you  know  we  ought  to  thank  the 
Lord  every  time  we  think  of  it,  that  parents 
aren't  guided  by  reason.  Why,  if  parents  had 

67 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

never  been  governed  by  anything  warmer  or 
sweeter  or  tenderer  or  holier  than  reason,  you 
and  I  should  have  been  carried  off  and  drowned 
like  superfluous  kittens,  when  we  were  little. 
That's  awful,  I  know,  but  it  is  true.  It  wasn't 
reason  that  made  them  keep  us  and  be 
good  to  us  and  sacrifice  their  comfort  for  our 
comfort  day  after  day,  night  after  night,  un- 
complainingly through  the  years  without  any 
prospect  of  reward — no,  that  was  the  most  un- 
reasonable thing  the  world  ever  saw.  There 
wasn't  a  symptom  or  a  trace  of  reason  in  that 
performance.  It  was  something  infinitely 
more  near  the  divine  than  reason — it  was  pure, 
unselfish  love,  directly  from  the  only  fountain 
head  that  pure  unselfish  love  ever  knew.  And 
so,  as  I  say,  for  some  reason  or  another,  or  be- 
yond and  above  and  better  than  all  reason  the 
father  of  this  little  Henrietta  proposition 
thought  just  as  much  of  her  as  he  had  been 
planning  to  think  of  Henry;  and  this  is  what 
the  silly  old  thing  said  about  it: 

68 


THE  GIRL-CHILD 

THE  GIRL-CHILD 

'Course  we'd  figgcred  on  a  boy-child,  same  as  people 

always  does — 

Baby-girls  is  jest  th'  uselessest  they  is  er  ever  was. 
Helpless  when  they're  kids,  an'  helpless  when  they're 

middle-aged  er  old- 
All  th'  fambly  turns  pertectors  fer  th'  ewe-lamb  of 

the  fold. 
Dassent  ever  pop  th'  question,  even  though  she's  lost 

in  love; 

Has  t'  set  an'  wait  till  some  man  labels  'er  'is  turtle- 
dove. 
Yit  it  wa'n't  a  boy,  by  gracious !  when  it  come,  th' 

other  day, 
But  we've  kind  o'  got  a  notion  that  we'll  keep  it, 

any  way. 

'Course  'twas  dreadful  disapp'intin'  that  it  couldn't 

bin  a  boy, 
An'  th'  tears  we  shed  er  swallered  wa'n't  no  sparklin' 

tears  o'  joy; 
But  she's  jest  so  small  an  cunnin',  an'  she  cuddles 

up  so  sweet, 
With    'er    fists    like    velvet    rosebuds    an'    'er   little 

wrinkled  feet — 

69 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

Clingin'  close,  jest  like  th'  tendrils  of  th'  mornin'- 

glory  vine 
As  it  clambers  up  th'  porch-post  on  a  piece  o'  cotton 

twine — 
Never  knowin'  she  hain't  welcome  as  th'  flowers  is 

in  May; 
So  we've  somehow  got  a  notion  that  we'll  keep  'er, 

any  way. 

Then,  ag'in,  I  thought  o'  mother — she  was  onct  a 

baby-girl ! 
Ain't  no  tellin'  jest  which  ey ester-shell's  th'  one  that 

hides  th'  pearl. 
Who'd  'a'  knowed  when  she  was  little  that  she'd  ever 

be  so  great, 
An*  would  make  my  dear  old  daddy  sich  a  stiddy 

runnin'-mate? 
Then  th'  one  that  lays  an'  snuggles  with  this  bran'- 

new  baby  hyer — 
Would  my  life  be  worth  th'  livin'  if  it  hadn't  bin  fer 

her? 
She  was  jest  as  pink  an'  helpless  as  this  new  one  is, 

one  day ; 
So  it's  mighty  easy  guessin'  that  we'll  keep  her,  any 

way. 


70 


KIDS  VS.  KIYOODLES 

KIDS  vs.  KIYOODLES 

But  some  people  would  rather  have  a  dog! 

Why  one  time  last  summer  or  some  other 
summer,  neither  you  nor  I  cares  when,  I  was 
travelling  through  Iowa,  going  from  Ft. 
Dodge  down  to  Des  Moines  in  one  of  those 
inter-Reuben  cars,  when  I  noticed  two  women 
in  the  same  car  I  was  partly  occupying.  Now, 
I  don't  want  to  fool  you  into  believing  that  it  is 
anything  remarkable  or  unusual  for  me  to 
notice  women  somewhere  away  from  home.  I 
notice  'em,  all  right,  wherever  I  go,  and  I 
don't  care  who  knows  it.  I  like  'em,  and  I 
don't  care  who  knows  that  either.  I  always 
did  like  'em.  I  began  liking  'em  when  I  was 
very  small. 

Why,  when  I  was  a  little  bit  of  a  flannel- 
faced  squawking  runt  that  nobody  else  in 
the  world  would  have  thought  anything  but  an 
unmitigated,  unexpurgated  nuisance,  there  was 
a  woman — a  good  woman ;  one  of  the  saints  of 

71 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

earth ;  and  supposed  to  be  in  her  right  mind  at 
the  time,  ready  at  any  moment,  if  necessary,  to 
lay  down  her  precious  life  for  my  worthless  one. 

My  mother  was  a  woman!  And  so  strong 
was  my  prejudice  in  their  favor  from  the  hour 
of  my  first  acquaintance  with  her  up  to  right 
now,  that  as  soon  as  I  had  reached  the 
age  at  which  I  should  select  someone  to  be 
more  sacred  to  me  than  ever  my  own  selfish 
soul's  eternal  salvation,  I  unhesitatingly  chose 
a  woman. 

My  wife  is  a  woman !  And  when  our  oldest 
two  boys  reach  manhood's  years,  they  are  going 
to  be  women  too,  for  they  are  girls  now  and  I 
don't  care.  But  if  my  son  grows  up  a  sissy  I'll 
break  his  neck ! 

So  you  see,  there  is  nothing  remarkable  in  the 
fact  that  I  noticed  those  two  women.  They 
were  the  only  ones  in  sight.  The  woman  on  the 
right  hand  side  of  the  car  was  nicely  tailored 
and  coiffured,  her  hands  showed  the  attention 
of  an  expert  manicurist,  her  suit-case  was  plas- 

72 


KIDS  VS.  KIYOODLES 

tered  all  over  from  stem  to  stern  on  port  and 
bow  sides  with  foreign  hotel  labels,  and  her  hair 
— well,  whoever's  hair  that  was  she  was  wear- 
ing— was  done  up  in  these  little — these  little — 
oh,  you  know  what  I  mean !  They  don't  wear 
'em  now,  but  some  years  ago  they  used  to 
wear  sled-loads  of  them.  These  little — per- 
oxide wienerwursts.  Whenever  I  see  a  stack 
like  that  I  smell  a  "rat"! 

But  the  woman  on  the  other  side  of  the  car 
was  a  totally  different  type  of  chromo.  She 
wasn't  so  well  dressed.  She  had  on  an  old 
ready-made  jacket  suit  that — honest  to  good- 
ness that  thing  didn't  fit  her  anywhere.  That 
suit  had  been  marked  down — marked  down! 
Why,  somebody  in  the  store  that  had  had  that 
thing  wished  onto  'em  had  got  writer's  cramp 
marking  that  suit  down  before  they  finally 
got  shut  of  it — nine-seventy-eight,  eight-sixty- 
eight,  seven-fifty-eight — I  don't  know  where 
they  really  did  stop  marking  that  thing  down 
or  why.  If  they  had  marked  it  down  to  one 

73 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

seventy-two  they  could  have  knocked  off  two 
more  dollars  just  as  e-easy!  You  just 
couldn't  have  lost  any  money  on  that  suit  un- 
less you  had  bought  it.  It  had  been  kept 
hanging  up  at  home  a  long  time,  too.  There 
was  a  hiked-up  place  right  below  the  collar, 
and  the  placquet  of  her  skirt  was  gaping — 
m-m-mmm!  And  her  hat  looked  like  "some- 
thing the  cat  had  brought  in" — wouldn't  she 
have  made  a  lovely  cover  design  for  the  Delin- 
eator or  Vogue!  No,  she  wouldn't.  But  she 
made  a  better-looking  picture  to  me  than  the 
other  woman  made.  I'll  tell  you  why: 

The  woman  on  the  right  hand  side  of  the 
car  held  in  her  strong,  loving,  well-tailored 
"maternal"  arms,  lavishing  on  it  all  the  loving 
tenderness  and  endearment  that  thousands  and 
thousands  of  human  babies  are  dying  for  the 
want  of  right  now,  one  of  those  little,  raveled- 
out-looking,  white  French  poodles  of  the  kind 
that  always  makes  you  want  to  fasten  a  long 
handle  to  it  and  wash  windows  with  it. 

74 


KIDS  VS.  KIYOODLES 

And  the  woman  on  the  other  side  of  the  car 
held  in  her  arms  a  totally  different  kind  of  a 
bundle.  Let's  look  at  it!  Wrapped  up  in 
one  of  those  old-fashioned  plaid  brown-and- 
gray  shawls — you've  seen  fifty  thousand  shawls 
of  exactly  that  same  weave  and  pattern ;  with 
most  of  the  twisted  fringe  pulled  off — just  a 
few  pieces  hanging  on  by  their  eyebrows.  And 
there  were  little  burnt  holes  in  the  shawl — 
some  of  the  older  folks  among  you  know  how 
those  holes  got  there.  Away  back  when 
grandmother  was  kind  of  young  herself  some- 
body had  put  a  lot  of  over-dry  chestnut  or 
hickory  wood  in  the  open  fire-place — no,  it 
wasn't  that!  It  was  right  after  they  had  put 
the  new  roof  on  the  old  corn-crib  and  some- 
body had  put  a  whole  armful  of  the  old  worn- 
out,  dry  white-oak  clapboards  into  the  fire, 
and  they  had  popped  all  over  the  place.  That 
old  shawl  was  hanging  over  the  cream- jar  right 
there  at  the  edge  of  the  hearth,  and  got  most  of 
the  sparks. 

75 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

This  woman  held  her  bundle  tenderly  and 
carefully,  and  whenever  a  whimper  would 
rise  she  would  pull  down  a  bit  of  that  old 
family-keep-sake  shawl  and  say  little  sweet, 
loving  nothings  to  it — the  kind  you  and  I  used 
to  like  to  have  whispered  to  us  when  we  were 
better  than  we've  sometimes  been  since.  So  I 
just  looked  at  this  woman  all  the  spare  time  I 
had,  instead  of  at  the  other  one.  For  I  be- 
lieved then,  and  I'm  still  stubborn  enough  to 
believe,  that  God  had  guided  that  baby  into  its 
little  poverty-stricken  but  love-guarded  harbor, 
and  that  He  hadn't  had  a  thing  to  do  with  lo- 
cating that  pup ! 

I'm  glad  you  feel  the  same  way  about 
it.  And  it  isn't  that  we  have  anything  against 
dogs,  either.  We  just  don't  like  to  see  a  per- 
fectly nice  dog  get  in  wrong  that  way.  And 
seeing  that  you  feel  the  same  way  on  the  child 
side  of  the  proposition,  I'm  going  to  give  you  a 
sermon  a  little  child  gave  me  once.  Don't  let 
that  word  "sermon"  scare  you — it  doesn't 

76 


WH!       PAPA  HOLDS  MY  HAND 

sound  like  a  sermon.     I  didn't  know  it  was 
one  till  afterward,  and  the  child  never  knew  it. 

WHEN  PAPA  HOLDS  MY  HAND 

I'm  not  a-scared  o'  horses  nor  street  cars  nor  any- 

fing, 
Nor  automobiles  nor  th'  cabs;  an'  once,  away  last 

spring, 
A  grea'  big  hook  an'  ladder  fing  went  slapty-bang- 

in'  by 

An'  I  was  purtnear  in  th'  way,  an'  didn't  even  cry  \ 
'Cause  when  I'm  down  town  I  go  'round  wif  papa, 

un'erstand, 
An'  I'm  not  'fraid  o'  nuffin'  when  my  papa  holds  my 

hand. 

W'y  street  cars  couldn't  hurt  him,  an'  th'  horses 
wouldn't  dare ; 

An'  if  a  automobile  run  agin  'im,  he  won't  care ! 

He'll  al'ys  keep  between  me  an'  th'  fings  'ith  danger 
in — 

I  know  so,  'cause  he  al'ys  has,  'ist  ev'ry  place  we 
been; 

An'  nen  at  night  I  laugh  myself  clear  into  Dreamy- 
land 


77 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

An'  never  care  how  dark  it  is,  when  papa  holds  my 
hand. 

'S  a  funny  fing — one  night  when  I  puttended  I  was 

'sleep 
An'  papa's  face  was  on  my  hand,  I  felt  a  somepin' 

creep 

Acrost  my  fingers ;  an'  it  felt  ezactly  like  a  tear, 
But  couldn't  been,  for  wasn't  any  cryin',  t'  I  could 

hear. 
An'  when  I  asked  him  'bout  it  he  'ist  laughed  to 

beat  th'  band — 
But  I  kep'  wonderin'  what  it  was  'at  creeped  out  on 

my  hand. 

Sometimes  my  papa  holds  on  like  I  maybe  helped 

him,  too, 
An'  makes  me  feel  most  awful  good  puttendin'  like 

I  do. 
An'  papa  says — w'y  papa  says — w'y  somepin'  like 

'at  we 
An*  God  'ist  keep  a  holdin'  hands  the  same  as  him 

an*  me. 
He  says  some  uvver  fings  'at  I  'ist  partly  un'er- 

stand, 
But  I  know  this — I'm  not  afraid  when  papa  holds  my 

hand. 

78 


AS  TO  WOMEN 

As  To  WOMEN 

But  as  the  little  girl  gets  bigger,  it  doesn't 
have  to  be  "papa"  that  holds  her  hand. 
"Papa"  loses  his  job.  Sometimes  it  happens 
that  that  is  the  one  job  at  which  "Everybody 
Works  But  Father."  And  as  the  little  girl 
grows  up  through  the  other  stages  of  hand- 
holding,  she  begins  to  take  on  all  the  other 
habits  of  the  grown-up  woman,  including  one 
you  may,  if  you  want  to,  call  the  "universal 
feminine  habit."  Now,  you  know  as  well  as  I 
do  that  that  word  "universal"  is  too  big  for  any 
mere  human  to  go  slopping  around  with.  No- 
body can  ever  know  how  much  it  means.  But 
when  I  wrote  this  thing,  I  was  much  younger 
than  I  am  now,  and  I  knew  all  about  it.  I 
knew  everything  then. 

Oh,  what  a  pity  it  is  you  couldn't  have  met 
me  then !  But  you  know  as  we  grow  older  we 
grow  less  sure  about  a  lot  of  things.  The  older 
we  are  the  less  we  know  for  sure.  That  is  an 

79 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

awful  prospect  to  hold  out  to  some  of  you  folks 
who  don't  know  much  now,  but  it's  the  best  I 
can  do. 

At  the  time,  I  was  doing  newspaper  work  in 
Los  Angeles  and  the  Woman's  Federation  of 
Clubs  had  coagulated  out  there  for  its  biennial 
meeting.  The  whole  town  was  full  of  women. 
I  stood  on  the  corner  of  Second  and  Broadway 
and  watched  thousands  after  thousands  of  them 
drill  by  on  the  way  to  the  club  house  where 
the  trouble  was  going  on,  and  I  saw  every 
mother's  daughter  and  aunt's  niece  of  the 
crowd  do  the  same  thing.  I  said  to  myself, 
"I've  discovered  something."  I  thought  I 
knew  everything,  but  to  my  surprise  I  saw 
even  I  could  go  on  finding  out  new  things.  I 
ran  up  three  flights  of  stairs  to  my  typewriter 
— that,  is;  to  my  machine — and  wrote  this, 
which  has  been  the  main  joy  and  solace  of 
about  seventeen  thousand  yellocutionists  and  a 
whole  battalion  of  glee  clubs  ever  since: 


80 


THE  UNIVERSAL  HABIT 

THE  UNIVERSAL  HABIT 

I  saw  her  go  shopping  in  stylish  attire, 

And  she  felt 

Of  her  belt 

At  the   back. 

Her  step  was  as  free  as  a  springy  steel  wire, 
And  many  a  rubberneck  turned  to  admire 

As  she  felt 

Of  her  belt 

At  the  back. 

She  wondered  if  all  those  contraptions  back  there 
Were  fastened  just  right — 'twas  her  unceasing  care; 

So  she  felt 

Of  her  belt 

At   the   back. 

I  saw  her  at  church  as  she  entered  her  pew, 

And  she  felt 

Of  her  belt 

At   the   back. 

She  had  on  a  skirt  that  was  rustly  and  new, 
And  didn't  quite  know  what  the  fast'nings  might  do ; 

So  she  felt 

Of  her  belt 

At  the   back. 
81 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

She  fidgeted  'round  while  the  first  hymn  was  read; 
She  fumbled  about  while  the  first  prayer  was  said. 

Oh,  she  felt 

Of  her  belt 

At  the   back. 

Jack  told  her  one  night  that  he  loved  her  like  mad, 

And  she  felt — 

For  her  belt 

At  the   back. 

She  didn't  look  sorry,  she  didn't  look  glad; 
Just  looked  like  she  thought  "Well,  that  wasn't  so 
bad!" 

As  she  felt 

For  her  belt 

At   the   back. 

And — well,  I  don't  think  'twas  a  great  deal  of  harm, 
For  what  should  the  maiden  have  found  but  Jack's 
arm, 

When  she  felt 

For  her  belt 

At  the  back? 

UNSATISFIED  CURIOSITY 

But  for  fear  some  of  you  may  believe  I'm  an 
anti-suffragist  or  some  other  kind  of  lunatic, 

82 


.<    UNSATISFIED  CURIOSITY 

I'm  going  to  try  to  red-ink  the  account  with 
the  women  folks  by  telling  something  on  these 
men.  You  know  woman  is  charged  with  hav- 
ing in  her  make-up  all  the  curiosity  in  the 
entire  solar  system  and  adjacent  territory. 
This  isn't  true.  She  has  all  she  can  carry- 
she  isn't  short  on  that.  Far  be  it!  But  so 
has  man  all  he  can  carry  of  it,  and  he's  a  better 
lifter. 

I'm  going  to  tell  you  a  story  of  the  most 
curious  person  I  ever  heard  of  and  he  wasn't 
a  woman.  He  was  one  of  those  walk- 
ing, living,  breathing  human  interrogation 
points  that  simply  has  to  know  what  is  going 
on  about  him,  especially  if  it's  none  of  his  busi- 
ness. 

Well,  one  day  this  man  with  the  ingrow- 
ing curiosity  was  riding  along  in  a  rail- 
road train,  sitting  right  behind  a  man  who  held 
on  his  lap  a  big — now  there,  I  got  that  wrong! 
I  started  to  say  a  big  pasteboard  box,  but  it 
wasn't  a  big  box  at  all.  It  was  a  lady's  hat 

83 


box  and  it  wasn't  over  two  and  a  half  feet 
across.  You  know,  there  was  a  time  when  we 
thought  a  box  as  big  as  that  was  some  box,  but 
that  was  before  they  began  keeping  their  hats 
in  a  piano  box  or  a  silo.  .  .  .  He  was  carrying 
a  box  about  so  big.  It  was  a  green  bandbox 
with  a  green  lid  on  it.  The  lid  was  tied  on  with 
eleven  or  twelve  strands  of  good,  stout  twine 
— you  know  the  kind  of  brown,  glazed  twine, 
you  stop  in  and  borrow  at  the  express  office 
when  you  are  going  to  send  something  by  par- 
cel-post— that's  the  kind.  That's  what  puts 
express  companies  out  of  business — somebody 
stringing  them  all  the  time.  That  string  was 
criss-crossed  right  squarely  in  the  geograph- 
ical center  of  the  lid,  and  tied  in  fourteen  hard 
knots  and  then  in  a  loop-knot  so  it  would  be 
easy  to  untie.  And  he  held  that  box  as  if  his 
life  depended  on  it.  He  never  let  go  of  it- 
he  never  took  his  eyes  off  it.  That  is,  both 
eyes.  One  eye  watched  the  box,  no  matter 
where  the  other  eye  was  working  at  the  time. 

84 


UNSATISFIED  CURIOSITY 

His  eyes  were  made  that  way,  so  he  could 
carry  a  box  and  watch  it  and  not  miss  any  of 
the  scenery  outside.  And  there  were  holes 
punched  in  the  lid  of  the  box.  Somebody  had 
just  taken  his  finger  and  shoved  it  down 
through  the  lid,  like  that,  pulled  his  finger  out 
—the  same  hole! — and  then  punched  another 
one.  The  man  behind  watched  the  box,  he 
watched  the  man,  he  watched  the  man  watch 
the  box,  he  watched  the  box  get  watched  by 
the  man.  After  awhile  he  happened  to  think : 

"My  goodness  gracious,  but  I'm  getting 
careless!  That  man  is  a  plumb  stranger  to 
me,  and  he  might  get  off  somewhere  with  that 
box  and  I  might  never  know  what  was  in  it!" 

Just  think  of  that — appalling  thought !  He 
might  never  know  what  that  stranger  car- 
ried in  that  box !  So  he  got  busy.  He  leaned 
forward  and  stretched  up  to  the  full  extent  of 
the  law,  and  said: 

"Ahem!  Stranger,  it  looks  as  if  you  might 
have  something  in  that  box." 

85 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

"Uh-huh,  I  have." 

A  few  minutes'  silence.  The  man  felt  very 
badly.  Then  he  hit  the  stranger  again,  to  see 
if  he  could  shake  anything  loose. 

"I  s'pose  it's  something  alive,  maybe." 

"Yeah,  it  is." 

Another  painful  silence.  The  man  felt 
worse.  He  tapped  the  victim  in  a  fresh  place 
to  see  if  he  would  flow  any  more  freely. 

"I  s'pose  you  got  that  lid  on  so  it  won't 
git  out." 

"Uh-huh." 

The  man  was  running  out  of  patience.  He 
used  up  all  he  had  left  by  saying: 

"I  s'pose  you  got  them  holes  punched  in  the 
lid  so's  it'll  get  air  and  won't  smother." 

"Yep,  that's  the  idea  exactly." 

Now,  that  man  was  out  of  patience.  He 
said  : 

"Well,  would  you  mind  tellin'  a  feller  what 
that  is  in  that  box?" 

"No,  I  wouldn't  mind  it  at  all." 
86 


UNSATISFIED  CURIOSITY 

Now,  the  man  was  worse  than  out  of  patience 
—he  was  just  plain  United  States  m-a-d  mad! 
That  was  all.  So  he  said: 

"Well,  what  is  that  in  that  box?" 

"It's  a  mongoose." 

"It's  a  what !!!!!" 

"It's  a  mongoose,  I  told  you." 

"Huh!  It  was  nice  of  you  to  tell  me,  but  I 
dunno  any  more  about  it  than  I  did.  What  is 
a  mongoose?" 

"It's  a  little  animal  that  lives  in  India  and 
eats  snakes." 

"Eats  snakes!  Wow!  What  do  you  want 
with  an  animal  that  eats  snakes?" 

"Well,  if  you  must  butt  into  my  business,  I 
don't  mind  telling  you  that  I  have  a  brother- 
in-law  at  home  that  drinks  a  great  deal,  and 
every  once  in  awhile  he  has  an  attack  of  de- 
lirium tremens,  and  we  bought  this  thing  to 
eat  up  the  snakes." 

"Well,  haven't  you  folks  got  any  sense? 
Don't  you  know  that  them  snakes  a  feller  sees 

87 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

when  he  gets  that  way,   ain't  real  snakes?" 
"Ye-es!    We  know  that.     And  this  isn't  a 
real  mongoose,  either." 

Now,  I  know  how  you  feel  about  that,  but  I 
can't  help  it.  I'd  like  mighty  well  to  go  right 
on  and  be  nice  and  tell  you  just  what  that 
really  was,  in  that  box,  but  I  don't  know  my- 
self. The  man  wouldn't  tell  me  at  all! 

JUMPING  AT  CONCLUSIONS 

I  had  a  real  reason  for  telling  you  that  story 
— to  teach  you  over  again  what  you  have  all 
learned  so  often:  that  it  doesn't  pay  to  jump  at 
conclusions,  to  use  hasty  judgment.  It  never 
pays  to  jump  at  conclusions.  I  used  to  have 
a  dog  that  did  that,  and  it  fixed  him,  all  right ! 
That  dog  would  jump  at  any  thing's  conclu- 
sion, that  went  past  him.  A  cow,  or  anything 
like  that.  He  would  wait  till  a  cow  got  barely 
past  him,  then  he  would  jump  at  her  conclu- 
sion. And  like  other  people  who  haven't  sense 
enough  to  keep  them  from  it,  he  would  hang 

88 


JUMPING  AT  CONCLUSIONS 

onto  the  first  conclusion  he  got  hold  of, 
whether  it  was  the  right  one  or  not.  You've 
seen  people  like  that !  Never  right  about  any- 
thing, never  doing  any  thinking  for  them- 
selves !  Why,  this  dog  beat  that  kind  of  folks 
all  to  pieces.  I've  seen  him  go  around  and 
around  half  an  hour  at  a  time,  sparing  no  pains 
or  effort  to  try  to  reach  his  own  conclusion. 

But  I  lost  him  because  of  that  very  habit. 
His  name  was  August.  He  was  given  to  me 
by  a  German  friend  of  mine.  He  was  a  Ger- 
man poodle.  That  is,  the  dog  was  a  German 
poodle.  I  named  him  August  after  this 
friend  who  gave  him  to  me  just  before  the 
assessor  was  expected.  I  was  very  fond  of 
August.  One  time  August  was  lying  out  in 
the  middle  of  the  road  and  a  big,  black,  seven- 
teen-hand,  bad-dispositioned  mule  came  by. 
August  jumped  at  that  mule's  conclusion. 
And  the  next  day  was  the  first  of  September, 
because  that  was  the  last  of  August. 

You  know,  I  must  have  had  an  awfully  reck- 
89 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

less  spell  sometime  ago — I  told  that  story  to 
an  English  tourist  who  was  tramping  about 
this  country  with  a  plate-glass  window  hung  to 
one  eye  by  a  rope.  He  looked  very  unhappy 
over  the  story  and  said: 

"Well,  me  deah  fellow!  What's  the  bally 
difference  what  time  of  the  yeah  it  was  when 
the  bloomin'  dog  was  killed !" 

Just  like  that!  That's  as  nearly  as  that 
feeble  August- September  wheeze  got  under 
his  hide! 

THE  SLANDERED  ENGLISH  DEFENDED 

But  do  you  know,  that  was  mighty  hateful 
of  me  to  turn  aside  and  take  a  gratuitous  wal- 
lop at  that  Englishman,  who  wasn't  harming 
me  at  all.  But  it's  in  our  American  blood! 
The  English  settled  this  country  once  and  this 
country  settled  the  English  twice  afterward. 
I  think  we're  going  to  lose  that  prejudice  now, 
by  fighting  in  a  common  and  righteous  cause 
with  England  against  the  enemy  of  all  civiliza- 

90 


AMERICANUS  BONEHEADUS 

tion.  But  we  talk  always  as  if  all  the  English 
were  the  kind  of  people  who  can't  see  a  joke. 
Anybody  with  good  sense  or  the  ability  to 
think  knows  that  isn't  true.  We  talk  also  as 
if  everybody  who  couldn't  see  a  joke  were 
English.  That  is  just  as  foolish  and  untrue. 
lAs-ten:  There  are  American-born  bone- 
heads-de-luxe!  Born  under  the  fluttering 
folds  of  the  Stars  and  Stripes  and  yet  couldn't 
see  a  joke  in  broad  daylight  with  the  help  of  a 
lantern  or  a  microscope.  Let  us  sob  together 
a  few  minutes — the  case  deserves  it.  We  sob 
a  lot  over  things  that  aren't  half  so  serious. 

AMERICANUS  BONEHEADUS 

Why,  down  in  Baltimore  where  I  live, 
where  the  Star  Spangled  Banner  that  we  all 
love — and  none  of  us  can  sing — was  written, 
we  have  that  kind  of  critters.  Once  just  be- 
fore starting  out  on  one  of  these  romps  of 
mine  I  went  into  a  big  department  store — one 
of  the  kind  that  miraculously  and  with  un- 

91 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

canny  cleverness  manages  to  have  in  stock 
everything  on  the  face  of  this  planet  except 
the  one  little  measly  thing  you  went  after  in  a 
big  hurry — how  do  they  do  it!  They  just  sold 
the  last  one,  but  they've  ordered  some  more. 
Isn't  it  comforting  to  know  they've  ordered 
some  more!  I  went  up  to  the  United  States 
senatorial  looking  man  who  was  floor-walking, 
and — but  that  man  wasn't  a  United  States 
senator,  really.  I  found  out  afterward  that 
he  was  a  perfect  gentleman.  Yet  he  looked 
as  much  like  a  United  States  senator  as  any- 
body dare  look  and  expect  to  hold  a  job.  See- 
ing he  looked  like  a  senator  I  knew  he  was  a 
questionable  person,  so  I  questioned  him.  I 
said: 

"Where's  the  gents'  furnishing  depart- 
ment?" 

"Back  up  that  stairway  and  turn  over  two 
aisles." 

I  wouldn't  do  anything  of  the  kind!  I 
92 


AMERICANUS  BONEHEAJDUS 

wasn't  going  carrying  on  that  way  in  his  place. 
But  I  thought  maybe  I  knew  what  he  meant, 
so  I  went  up  that  stairway  face-first,  as  I 
nearly  always  do  among  strangers  if  I  am 
watched  closely,  and  went  over  past  the  end  of 
a  couple  of  counters.  Another  blank  face 
shot  up  before  me  like  a  jack-in-the-box,  and 
said: 

"Something  for  you,  sir?" 

I  said,  "Yep,  I  want  to  look  at  some  union 
suits." 

"In  underwear?"  he  asked. 

"No,"  I  replied,  "a  hat." 

Only  a  little  while  before  that  I  had  rushed 
into  another  department  store  for  some  home 
shopping  I  had  been  forgetting  every  day  reg- 
ularly for  a  month — that's  the  way  with  men. 
Aren't  they  the  awfullest  shoppers?  They  go 
shopping  so  listlessly.  They  shouldn't  do  it. 
They  ought  always  to  take  a  list  with  them. 
I  approached  a  young  lady  salesman  with  her 

93 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

hands  draped  over  her  digestion,  standing 
there  on  her  feet,  doing  nothing  useful,  and 
said: 

"Where  do  you  keep  your  kimonos?" 

"For  a  lady?"  she  asked. 

"No,"  I  said,  "for  my  uncle,  a  section- 
boss." 

Only  a  few  years  ago  I  was  out  in  Los  An- 
geles, California.  I  hadn't  been  out  there  for 
five  years.  You  know  the  population  changes 
there  every  few  minutes,  and  I  didn't  see  why 
it  wasn't  safe  for  me  to  go  back  again  if  I 
wanted  to.  And  another  thing — when  I  lived 
there  I  wore  a  mustache  that  I  think  was  about 
the  reddest  thing  in  captivity.  It  was  so  red 
that  people  a  block  away  thought  my  nose  was 
bleeding.  I  had  shaved  off  that  facial  torch 
and  thought  I  was  completely  disguised.  So 
I  went  into  a  shoe-store  where  I  used  to  have 
quite  a  large  account,  before  I  moved  away 
and  it  wasn't  any  account.  A  young  man 
came  up  to  me  and  said : 

94 


A  RAILROAD  WRECK 

"Hel-lo,  there!" 

I  said,  "You  get  out!  You  don't  mean  to 
say  you  remember  me!" 

"Remember  you!"  he  snorted.  "I  never 
forget  anybody's  face  that  I  ever  fitted  a  pair 
of  shoes  on." 

A  RAILROAD  WRECK 

Just  a  few  weeks  before  that  I  had  been 
travelling  along  through  the  southern  part  of 
the  state  of  Iowa,  on  an  eastbound  Burlington 
train,  going  about  fifty-five  knots  per  hour 
through  the  outskirts — now,  about  those  out- 
skirts. I'm  not  sure  I  know  what  I'm  talking 
about.  I  was  in  the  town  only  a  little  bit,  and 
my  attention  was  attracted  to  many  other 
things.  I  don't  really  know  whether  that 
town  had  on  anything  except  its  outskirts. 
And  let  me  tell  you  now:  If  that  town's 
outskirts  had  been  as  thin  and  as  scarce  as 
some  I've  witnessed  since,  that  train  would 
never  have  whistled  for  it.  It  would  just 

95 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

have  covered  up  the  headlight  and  hurried  by, 
blushing. 

But  as  I  say,  we  were  going  about  fifty- 
five  miles  an  hour  through  that  little  town 
when  all  of  a  sudden  a  brake-beam  dropped 
down  and  ripped  the  hind  trucks  off  of  the 
mail  car  and  away  went  that  whole  train  in 
one  mass  of  human  and  fifty-seven  other  vari- 
eties of  junk.  I  was  among  and  a  part  of  said 
junk.  Nobody  was  killed.  Several  of  us 
were  hammered  up  some.  The  man  next  to 
me  in  that  train — one  of  the  finest  men  and 
best  companions  I  have  ever  known — was 
mashed  into  a  jelly!  The  jelly  was  right  in 
front  of  him  in  the  dining-car  and  he  was 
mashed  right  slap  into  it  and  didn't  get  hurt 
a  bit.  ...  I  had  a  broken  arm.  Just  a  slight 
crack — only  about  fifteen  hundred  dollars' 
worth  when  we  settled.  We  were  lying  along 
— did  you  ever  notice  that  when  anybody  gets 
hurt  in  any  kind  of  public  conveyance  he  starts 
right  in  lying?  You  can't  believe  a  thing  he 

96 


A  RAILROAD  WRECK 

says  till  after  the  company  has  settled  with 
him. 

I  say  we  were  lying  along  on  piles  of 
hay  and  Pullman  blankets  when  the  folks  in 
that  big  Iowa  meadow  came  running  like  quar- 
ter horses  to  "pass  this  way  and  view  the  re- 
mains." They  thought  a  whole  lot  of  us  had 
been  pulverized  for  their  amusement;  but  we 
hadn't.  We  were  awfully  sorry,  on  their  ac- 
count, and  apologized  profusely  to  them  and 
told  them  with  a  few  rehearsals  we  should 
probably  have  done  much  better — we  had  just 
got  that  thing  up  on  the  spur  of  the  moment. 
We'd  never  been  thrown  together  before  any- 
where. You  see,  we  wanted  to  make  good  so 
that  if  we  should  ever  hold  another  wreck  there 
they  would  all  buy  season-tickets  and  come. 
One  old  gentleman  with  a  big  straw-hat  and  a 
set  of  maa-maa!  whiskers  came  up  and  looked 
compassionately  down  on  poor,  broken  me  and 
said: 

"Was  you  hurt  in  the  coach,  mister?" 
97 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

"No,"  I  answered  apologetically,  "I  was 
hurt  in  the  elbow,  but  I  came  mighty  nearly 
being  hit  in  the  vestibule." 

THE  HIGH  DIVE 

Over  in  my  own  native  state  of  Ohio,  a  few 
winters  ago,  I  was  sitting  at  the  supper-table 
one  night  beside  the  young  man  who  had 
charge  of  the  entertainment  course  in  that 
town,  when  I  said : 

"Oh,  by  the  way,  I  wish  you'd  have  one  glass 
of  water  out  on  the  stage  tonight,  will  you?" 

"To  drink?"  he  inquired. 

"No,  indeed,"  I  replied  indignantly,  "I 
make  a  high  dive  in  the  second  act." 

THE  SHOCKING  VERSE 
And  then  you  folks  know  that  there  is  no- 
body in  all  this  world  mean  enough  to  try  de- 
liberately to  sneak  a  joke  into  a  piece  of  obit- 
uary verse.  That  is  about  the  last  thing  on 
earth  that  should  be  given  a  hypodermic 

98 


THE  SHOCKING  VERSE 

squirt  of  hilarity  or  frivolity.  But  one  time 
when  I  was  editing  a  paper  down  at  Rich- 
mond, Indiana,  there  were  some  folks  who 
came  in — the  kind  of  folks  who  never  smiled 
voluntarily  in  all  their  born  days.  You  know 
the  kind.  The  sort  that  infest  in  small  num- 
bers every  community,  who  mistake  their  own 
stupidity  for  seriousness.  Not  quite  enough 
home  above  the  eyebrows  to  permit  them  to 
see  the  merry  jest  that  makes  others  smile,  so 
they  remain  solemn. 

They  should  be  approached  "more  in  sorrow 
than  in  anger."  We  will  all  admit  there  is 
profound  seriousness  in  their  case,  and  let  it 
go  at  that.  .  .  .  I've  always  had  a  prejudice 
against  that  kind  of  folks  because  I  got 
whipped  on  account  of  one  of  'em  once.  I  was 
taken  to  church  when  I  was  a  little  bit  of  a  tad 
down  in  Southern  Ohio  where  there  was  an 
old-fashioned  preacher  that  didn't  know  a 
thing. 

Now,  when  I  just  mildly  and  plainly  state 
99 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

that  he  didn't  know  anything,  I  have  under- 
stated the  case — I  have  promoted  him.  He 
didn't  even  suspect  anything.  And  right  in 
the  middle  of  the  service  that  old  man  said 
something  that  made  me  cackle  out  loud  in 
meeting  and  get  whipped  when  I  went  home. 
You'd  have  done  the  same  if  you  had  been  there 
and  heard  him.  You  don't  know  what  it  was ! 
He  called  a  sepulcher  a  sel-pucker!  Now,  if 
any  of  you  folks  in  your  most  hilarious  mo- 
ments can  think  of  a  funnier  word  than  sel- 
pucker,  go  to  it !  I  can't  .  .  .  But  those  peo- 
ple who  had  brought  in  those  obituary  lines  had 
that  same  sel-pucker  type  of  a  sense  of  humor. 
The  first  two  lines  scared  me  nearly  to  death 
and  the  next  two  nearly  gave  me  hysterics. 
I'll  tell  you  what  they  were,  and  you'll  get  the 
same  shock  I  did: 

Dearest  grandpa,  how  we  miss  you; 
Miss  you,  Oh,  we  cannot  tell! 
Yet  we  hope  some  day  to  meet  you, 
Yes,  we'll  all  meet  you  in  heaven. 
100 


POETIC  JUSTICE 

You  see,  they  plumb  spoiled  that  rhyme, 
but  look  what  they  pulled  grandpa  out  of! 
They  gave  the  old  rascal  a  transfer,  just  in 
time! 

POETIC  JUSTICE 

But  sometimes  we  smarties  who  go  around 
making  fun  of  other  people  because  their  sense 
of  humor  isn't  just  exactly  like  ours — we  get 
caught  and  punished — don't  we  just!  One 
time — and  I  certainly  do  hate  to  tell  about  this, 
for  it  hurts  me  even  to  think  of  it — I  was 
going  from  Baltimore  to  Pittsburgh  on  a 
Baltimore  and  Ohio  train.  Just  as  we  were 
getting  close  to  McKeesport  a  man  got  up 
from  his  seat  and  went  across  the  aisle  and 
slid  into  the  seat  beside  another  fellow.  The 
man  who  had  gone  across  the  aisle  braced 
himself  as  for  some  awful  ordeal,  took  in  a 
deep  breath  till  he  looked  like  a  pouter  pigeon, 
and  said: 

"C-c-c-can  y-y-you  t-t-t-t-t-tell  m-me  wh- 
101 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

what  t-time  this  t-t-train  g-gets  to  P-p-p-p-p- 
p-p-p-Pittsburgh  ?" 

The  other  man  didn't  answer  him.  He  just 
looked  scared  at  him.  I  couldn't  imagine 
what  was  wrong.  I  saw  by  his  face  that  he 
heard  all  right.  It  was  too  deep  for  me.  I 
didn't  see  why  the  man  didn't  answer  before 
something  broke.  I  thought  that  fellow  would 
die  or  explode  or  something  from  the  pressure 
he  was  carrying.  But  he  didn't.  He  was  a 
gritty  chap.  He  took  in  another  breath  like 
that  first  one,  cranked  himself  up,  cut  out  the 
muffler,  threw  himself  into  low  gear,  stepped  on 
the  accelerator,  changed  the  mixture  a  time  or 
two,  went  from  magneto  back  to  battery,  and 
sounded  as  if  he  had  three  dirty  spark-plugs 
and  mud  in  his  timer.  He  said  it  again.  But 
still  the  man  didn't  answer  him.  He  looked 
worse  scared  than  he  had  looked  the  other  time, 
and  crawled  out  past  the  other  fellow's  knees — 
I  wish  you'd  have  seen  the  sprint  he  made  for 
the  smoking-car.  You  never  saw  such  run- 

102 


ning.  When  he  reached  that  refuge  he 
slammed  the  door  behind  him  so  hard  he 
cracked  the  glass  in  it. 

And  this  other  poor  chap — afflicted,  disap- 
pointed, dejected,  went  back  to  his  own  seat 
and  slunk  down  in  it  so  far  he  was  sitting  on  his 
collar-button,  and  heaved  a  sigh  like  the  last 
suds  going  out  of  the  sink.  It  was  the  saddest 
thing  I  ever  saw  in  my  life.  I  couldn't  stand 
it.  I  reached  up  in  the  rack  for  my  hat,  went 
across  the  aisle  and  said : 

"Cheer  up,  bud.  I  couldn't  help  overhear- 
ing that  question  you  murmured  to  that  man 
who  got  up  and  went  away  from  you,  and  I 
want  to  tell  you  that  this  train  is  due  in  Pitts- 
burgh at  6:25,  and  she  is  running  right  on  the 
dot,  now." 

He  started  to  thank  me.  That  was  only  a 
few  years  ago,  he's  probably  somewhere  thank- 
ing me  yet.  I  went  on  to  the  smoking-car  to 
find  that  mean  man  and  have  an  accounting 
with  him.  I  found  him.  I  said: 

103 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

"Look  here,  old  top,  why  on  earth,  when 
that  poor  fellow  back  there  nearly  blew  up 
trying  to  ask  you  something,  didn't  you  say 
something  to  him — talk  to  him  like  a  fellow- 
human  instead  of  running  off  like  a  rabbit — 
hey?" 

And  that  man  said: 

"D-do  y-y-y-y-y-y-you  sup-p-p-p-pose  I 
w-want  to  g-g-g-get  m-my  b-b-b-b-b-b-block 
knocked  off?" 

To  PREVENT  A  WHY  NOT 

And  now,  just  because  if  I  don't  somebody 
will  ask  me  why  I  didn't,  I'm  going  to  give  you 
the  first  thing  I  ever  wrote  that  made  the  world 
sit  up  and  deal  tenderly  with  me.  You've 
heard  this,  you've  read  it  a  thousand  times. 
If  you  haven't  I'm  ashamed  of  you.  Yet  if  I 
don't  give  it  when  I»  the  author,  am  there 
in  person,  there  is  always  trouble,  so  here 
goes: 


104 


FINNIGIN  TO  FLANNIGAN 

FINXIGIN  To  FLANNIGAN 

Superintindint  wuz  Flannigan; 

Boss  av  th'  siction  wuz  Finnigin. 

Whiniver  th'  cyars  got  off  th'  thrack 

An'  muddled  up  things  t'  th'  divvle  an'  back, 

Finnigin  writ  it  t'  Flannigan, 

Afther  th'  wrick  wuz  all  on  agin; 

That  is,  this  Finnigin 

Repoorted  t'  Flannigan. 

Whin  Finnigin  furrst  writ  t'  Flannigan, 
He  writed  tin  pa-ages,  did  Finnigin ; 
An'  he  towld  just  how  th'  wrick  occurred — 
Yis,  minny  a  tajus,  blundherin'  wurrd 
Did  Finnigin  write  t'  Flannigan 
Afther  th'  cyars  had  gone  on  agin — 
That's  th'  way  Finnigin 
Repoorted  t'  Flannigan. 

Now  Flannigan  knowed  more  than  Finnigin — 
He'd  more  idjucation,  had  Flannigan. 
An'  ut  wore  'm  clane  an'  complately  out 
T'  tell  what  Finnigin  writ  about 
In  's  writin'  t'  Musther  Flannigan. 
So  he  writed  this  back :     "Musther  Finnigin : — 
Don't  do  sich  a  sin  agin ; 
Make  'em  brief,  Finnigin  !" 

105 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

Whin  Finnigin  got  that  frum  Flannigan 
He  blushed  rosy-rid,  did  Finnigin. 
An'  he  said :     "I'll  gamble  a  whole  month's  pay 
That  ut'll  be  minny  an'  minny  a  day 
Before  sup'rintindint — that's  Flannigan — 
Gits  a  whack  at  that  very  same  sin  agin. 
Frum  Finnigin  to  Flannigan 
Repoorts  won't  be  long  agin." 

Wan  day  on  th'  siction  av  Finnigin, 

On  th'  road  sup'rintinded  be  Flannigan, 

A  ra-ail  give  way  on  a  bit  av  a  currve 

An'  some  cyars  wint  off  as  they  made  th'  shwerrve. 

"They's  nobody  hurrted,"  says  Finnigin, 

"But  repoorts  must  be  made  t'  Flannigan." 

An'  he  winked  at  McGorrigan 

As  married  a  Finnigin. 

He  wuz  shantyin'  thin,  wuz  Finnigin, 

As  minny  a  railroader's  been  agin, 

An'  'is  shmoky  ol'  lamp  wuz  burrnin'  bright 

In  Finnigin's  shanty  all  that  night — 

Bilin'  down  Js  repoort,  wuz  Finnigin. 

An'  he  writed  this  here :     "Musther  Flannigan : — 

Off  agin,  on  agin, 

Gone  agin. — Finnigin." 


106 


THE  REASON  IN  ALL  THIS 

THE  REASON  IN  ALL  THIS 
And  now  for  the  last  two  mftiutes,  after 
which  you  grab  your  hats  and  things  and 
struggle  for  the  door.  I  want  to  tell  you  the 
why  of  this  thing  I've  been  doing — the  at- 
tempted humor  I  have  handed  out  to  you.  It 
isn't  only  for  the  laugh  you  get  out  of  it. 
That  is  a  part  of  my  aim,  and  a  very  legitimate 
part  of  it.  But  that  isn't  all.  Humor  isn't 
for  its  own  sake  alone.  It  is  a  means  to  an  end. 
To  run  a  whole  one  hundred  minutes  of  humor 
with  nothing  else  to  it  is  as  foolish  as  to  coal 
up  and  water  a  big  mogul  engine,  get  up  steam 
to  the  popping-off  point  and  then  run  it  back 
and  forth  along  the  whole  length  of  the  division 
without  hitching  anything  to  it.  Humor  is 
not  the  gasoline  of  life — it  is  the  transmission 
oil  and  gear-grease. 

You  have  caught  me  now  and  then  slipping 
in  a  sermon  between  the  laughs.  I  didn't  care 
if  you  did  catch  me  at  it.  Mother  wanted 

107 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

every  one  of  her  big  ugly  boys  to  be  regular 
preachers.  You  know  what  those  good  old 
Christian  mothers  are,  God  bless  'em.  But  we 
couldn't  all  preach  alike.  Every  human  being 
is  born  into  the  world  with  the  ability  to  preach 
the  gospel  in  some  way  that  no  other  human 
being  can.  If  we  could  only  find  our  own  ways 
to  preach  what  a  world  it  would  be!  But  we 
used  to  think  all  preaching  had  to  be  done  the 
same  way,  and  we  wanted  to  please  mother. 
One  of  the  boys  is  a  regular  preacher  and  a 
good  one.  I  am  neither.  I  tried  it  once — one 
consecutive  time,  to  preach  the  regular  way. 
When  I  had  finished,  the  choir  arose  bewil- 
deredly  to  its  hind-feet  and  sang,  "Hallelujah, 
'tis  done." 

And  for  once,  the  choir  was  right.  I  saw 
that  if  ever  I  preached  it  would  have  to  be 
some  other  way.  I  couldn't  do  that  kind. 
So  this  was  the  way  that  found  me — slipping 
the  sermons  in  between  the  laughs,  so  that 
maybe  they  might  digest  more  readily  and  live 

108 


THE  REASON  IN  ALL  THIS 

longer  than  any  other  sermons  I  could  preach 
—little  sermons  so  simple  that  I  even  under- 
stand them  myself!  And  that  is  such  a  help! 
For  the  purpose  of  humor  is  to  foster  in 
human  beings  that  sane,  wholesome  philosophy 
or  religion  known  as  optimism.  Now,  op- 
timism isn't  what  some  people  think  it  is. 
Some  people  think  an  optimist  is  that  sort 
of  thing  that  goes  around  grinning  all 
the  time  like  a  Cheshire  cat,  saying,  "Every- 
thing's all  right,  everything's  all  right," 
when  half  the  time  everything  isn't  all  right. 
That  isn't  an  optimist  who  does  that — it's 
a  cheerful  idiot.  There's  a  vast  difference 
between  an  optimist  and  any  kind  of  idiot. 
It  takes  intelligence  of  the  finest,  faith  of  the 
most  sublime,  sanity  of  the  most  complete  to 
be  a  real  optimist.  Faith  and  intelligence  and 
balance  to  know  that  although  there  may  be 
heartaches  today — and  God  who  made  us 
and  loves  us  knows  that  some  todays  are  just 
crowded  with  heartaches  that  nobody  but  an 

109 


SUNSHINE  AND  AWKWARDNESS 

idiot  or  a  lunatic  could  laugh  at  at  the  time- 
though  those  things  come  and  hurt  as  deeply 
as  we  think  we  can  bear,  those  things  aren't 
permanent — Oh,  isn't  it  great  that  they  don't 
last  always !  What  a  little  of  the  sum-total  of 
our  life  they  form!  They  aren't  terminals — 
they  are  only  way-stations  and  whistling-posts 
and  water-tanks  on  the  way  toward  the  great, 
big  beautiful  finish  of  things  in  God's  own 
good  time  and  perfect  way — that  He  is  saving 
as  a  glorious  and  satisfying  surprise  for  us. 
And  the  old  woman  who  said  the  thing  that 
supplied  the  text  for  my  benediction  that  comes 
right  now  was  the  most  perfect  optimist;  and 
she  wasn't  laughing  a  bit  when  she  said : 

TOMORROW 

My  life  has  reached  the  sunset  way; 

'Mid  the  twilight  shadows  deep 
The  tender  love  of  my  Father's  voice 

Is  lulling  my  soul  to  sleep. 
My  empty  arms  are  hungering 

For  the  forms  once  sheltered  there, 

110 


TOMORROW 

But  the  Father  has  taken  them  all  away — 
They  needed  a  kindlier  care. 

One  night  when  my  life  was  young  and  strong, 

I  was  crooning  a  lullaby 
To  my  sweet,  wee  tot  three  summers  old, 

When  the  baby  began  to  cry 
For  the  dollies  my  mother-hands  had  made, 

And  I  soothed  her  childish  sorrow 
With  the  words :     "Your  babies  are  put  away ; 

You  may  have  them  again,  tomorrow." 

And  now,  as  I  travel  the  sunset  road 

'Mid  the  twilight  soft  and  deep, 
While  my  empty  arms  are  starving 

For  the  forms  once  hushed  to  sleep, 
My  Father  in  love  bends  over  me 

And  there's  hope  instead  of  sorrow 
As  He  says:     "Your  babies  are  safe  with  me; 

You  may  have  them  again — tomorrow." 


Ill 


By  Strickland  Gillilan 


INCLUDING  FINNIGIN 

A  book  containing  eighty  poems  by  the  popular 
author  of  this  volume.  It  includes  "Finnigin  to 
Flannigan,"  "The  Cry  of  the  Alien,"  "Me  an'  Pap 
an'  Mother,"  and  other  famous  poems.  There  is 
something  to  hold  the  thought  or  touch  the  heart  on 
every  page  while  the  verses  swing  between  laughter 
and  tears. 

Worth  reading  over  and  over.  Humanity  held  up  to 
nature. —  Boston  Globe. 

It  is  just  as  funny  as  any  verses  written. —  Chicago 
Daily  News. 

There  is  occasion  for  a  smile,  a  tear  or  a  big  laugh 
on  every  page,  according  to  how  you  happen  to  feel. — 
New  York  Press. 

Attractive  cover.     Cloth,  12mo.     $1.00 


INCLUDING  YOU  AND  ME 

This  delightful  book  contains  over  one  hundred 
joyous  poems  of  the  kind  that  everybody  likes  to 
read.  Gillilan  is  one  of  America's  leading  humorists 
and  his  verses  appeal  to  the  heart  with  their  quaint 
humor  and  cheerful,  hopeful  philosophy. 

You  will  chase  away  many  blue  devils  if  you  keep  this 
book  near  you. —  Pittsburgh  Gazette  Times. 

All  cheerful  and  full  of  the  joy  of  living  and  the 
warmth  of  human  brotherhood.  They  grip  the  heart. — 
Duluth  Herald. 

Every  poem  is  a  gem  and  the  collection  a  sparkling 
galaxy.  No  one  can  read  the  book  without  feeling  more 
cheerful. —  Syracuse  Post-Standard. 

Handsomely/  bound  in  cloth.     $1.00 


Forbes  &  Company,  Publishers,  Chicago 


University  of  California 

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